Only one more performance of the remarkable production of FROM THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD and that is Saturday's matinee (December 5th.) If you can get a ticket, grab it. Just reading a synopsis of Janacek's final opera and you'd think it would be the farthest thing from a successful work. The opera has no plot, no lovers, no star roles, no women except for a nameless few who take up a few minutes of stage time, no arias, no conventional forms at all. HOUSE is merely a sequence of scenes of a prison camp and it's brutality, and the resultant inmate desperation--marked by many passages where no singing occurs and long monologues of several men and their sad former lives. Events do not lead to each other, they just occur. And for ninety minutes, Janacek holds you spellbound through his marvelous, rich score, here abetted by Patrice Chereau's (once the opera world's most notorious enfant terrible, now a respected interpreter) illuminating production. Everyone, including the extras who do not sing, finds a personal truth to his character so the large cast does not collapse under its own weight. Movement, stance, vocal inflection, use of the language, phrasing, color--every weapon in a singer's arsenal is brought out and the audience gets a great shot of emotion and humanity. The entire cast is memorable, but a few singers still manage to stand out: a wonderfully varied Kurt Streit as the half-mad Shuratov, who repeats parts of his pathetic story over and over; Stefan Margita as Luka, a raging terminally ill loner who hides a deep secret; Peter Hoare as Shapkin and (especially) Peter Mattei as Shishkov--each given a memorable monologue, the latter's following closely on the heels of the former's and building to a shattering climax. Only a genius could make such a musical sequence work as brilliantly as it does. And this production does the whole work more than justice. The few "diversions" from the printed libretto only enhance what Janacek has accomplished, never arbitrary or unmotivated. Even the end of the opera gains by a fresh apporach as the final outpouring of hope has been changed in this production from one of "physical" freedom to one of freedom of the mind. The original version that Janacek wrote has an eagle who was wounded finally fly free just as one of the prisoners is released. The inmates celebrate both the man's and the bird's freedom before they are forced to march off to work. In Chereau's take on it, the bird is made of wood and the men want to be set free so badly they "imagine" they see the eagle escape into the air, as a very old prisoner (a heart-breaking Heinz Zednik) hides it under his shabby clothes. The orders to march are all the more wrenching. The MET orchestra (rather sparse, just as Janacek wrote it) was magnificent, almost every instrument playing a memorable solo, including a fiendish one for violin near the beginning. The conducting of Esa-Pekka Salonen was all anyone could possibly wish. (In fact, one of the pleasurable jolts of this production comes at the VERY beginning, when Salonen takes his seat without fanfare, the lights go out immediately before anyone knows he's even there and the music starts. A brilliant stroke.) A sign of the spell this production casts: the opera stopped and the house was silent. The clapping started low and began to build until the lights and the curtain rose on the cast. The cheers only grew louder as each group took its bow. When the principals at last came forward, the sound was almost deafening. They bowed several times to even louder cheering (!) It did not recede when Salonen finally made his appearance.
If you do not get a chance to see it at The MET, a very good DVD exists of this production (with other singers) from it's previous performances at the Festival Aix-en-Provence in 2007. It is wonderful to have, but not quite a substitute for seeing it live. May The MET bring it back so I can experience it again.
