Customer Reviews

Janacek: From the House of the Dead / Mladi: Rikadla

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How do you make an uplifting opera out of a group of exhausted, demoralised, malnourished prisoners stuck in the Nineteenth Century equivalent of a Stalinist Gulag? Let Janacek show you how.

This is a piece where practically nothing happens. A new prisoner arrives, there's a bit of aimless brutality, the prisoners put on a ramshackle show, a caged eagle is given its (symbolic) freedom and...er...that's about it. The most interesting action happens in a series of long narratives, life-stories told by prisoners to while away the endless time spent in this hellhole.

Yet this is throughout edge-of-the-seat stuff. Janacek, in the last opera of his Indian Summer, uniquely captures that 'spark of humanity' to be found in even the most degenerate of men - both musically and emotionally. Just listen to the Prelude for a taste of what is to come - the chain-clanking drudge of prison life; the manic, soaring, screaming violin cadenza taken from an unfinished Violin Concerto; the brief brassy moments of uplifting hope and thoughts of freedom. And these harsh juxtapositions are clothed in a brutal, spare, blackboard-scraping instrumenation that seems to push Janacek's unique orchestration methods to its limits.

This is especially true in Mackerras's riveting performance, for he will accept none of the later attempts to smooth out Janacek's searing textures, made under the pretext that he left the work unfinished at his death. Mackerras, greatest of all Janacek conductors, presents us with the cruel unwavering truth of the composer's vision. He is abetted by a cast of top singers, Czech nationals all (including the wonderful veteran Beno Blachut), who bring the range of low-life characters vivdly to life.

This is an opera unlike any other in the repertoire and a masterpiece to boot. And Mackerras, wearing his copious research as lightly as ever, delivers a definitive performance of it.

This is a very important and fine recording of Janacek's final and most remarkable opera. It is done in a very authorative edition based on the copied autograph score the way Janacek left it, undoing virtually all of the changes and additions to the orchestration his disciples Chlubna and Brekala made, which unfortunately softens the power of this opera.

This results in an edgier, harsher, rougher, chamber-like sound which is truer to Janacek's intentions. It also heightens the power of this work and shows the uniqueness of the composer's voice. Mackerras and John Tyrell must be commended for the tremendous amount of musicological work to restore the work to it's original intended glory.

The two chamber works also serve as wonderful complement to this great work.

This is a superb recording of this rarely performed work. Janacek was never afraid of violating convention and this opera is no exception. Dramatized from Doestoevsky's novel, it lacks a conventional plot with a single dramatic action and clear primary characters. Instead, From The House of the Dead is a series of episodes treating the themes of crime, punishment, and expiation. The structure is mirrored in the structure of the music, which has sort of a theme and variations structure. The score has been reconstructed to approximate Janacek's original intentions, dropping accretions added after his death by some of his well intentioned disciples. The result is also atypical with orchestration featuring a relatively small orchestra and ensemble, as opposed to star-oriented, vocal parts. The result is certainly unconventional and features some of Janacek's most powerful music.

Sir Charles Mackerras' recordings of Janacek's operas consitute a major event: they have helped bring closer to the mainstream repertoire masterpieces that should never have been out on the fringes in the first place. Perhaps the most extraordinary of these operas is From the House of the Dead. Here, there is no dramatic development in any conventional sense: we are shown routine life in a prison camp, interspersed with various convicts narrating - or rather, reliving - the horrendous crimes that have brought them into the house of the dead. The last and longest of these, by Shishkov, seems to contain a tragedy of the magnitude of Berg's Wozzeck. Out of such material, Janacek constructs a drama as gripping and as intense as any this century.

The playing of the Vienna Philharmonic is sensational: try, as a sampler, the end of Act 2, where the dreamy, nostalgic mood suddenly turns ugly. The ensemble cast is, without exception, magnificent; and Mackerras' credentials as a Janacek conductor beyond doubt. The recorded sound, too, is superb. All in all, it is hard to imagine a greater opera, or a finer recording.

Sin duda, esta ópera es una de las más grandes que se hayan escrito en el Siglo XX. Esta grabación raya casi en lo perfecto: Sonido, balance, dirección orquestal, intérpretes, etc.
Sir Charles Mackerras es sin duda el mejor exponente de Janacek hoy día, logra captar a la perfección las sutilezas orquestales de Janacek y en todo momento mantiene la música con la tensión necesaria que se necesita para comentar situaciones de la vida diaria en una prisión. Los personajes crecen a lo largo de la obra y cada uno de ellos en sí vive su propio drama.
El sonido del preludio es glorioso, con sus tremendos agudos en las cuerdas y las ásperas disonancias, logra crear la atmósfera necesaria. Una joya, sin lugar a dudas. Recomiendo ampliamente ésta grabación, la que en mi opinión, tardará muchos años en ser igualada.

This is a stunning piece of music, a rich symphony of voices, a pleasure to sit and listen to! Not all operas bear listening to, dare I say, without the support of staging. Janacek's late style is complex and bold, but comprehensible without reference to musical theory. "From the House of the Dead" is relatively short, for an opera; I for one feel that I couldn't ask for more of such acoustical and emotional intensity. The two chamber pieces that fill out the second disc are wonderfully eccentric and original.
My real question is, why doesn't some company seize the chance to produce this great opera? The audience IS ready!

This opera is a 20th century masterpiece easily on a par with Elektra, Lady Macbeth, Peter Grimes and Wozzeck. One can only hope that eventually it will be performed as often as these works (maybe the recent MET broadcast will help). The orchestration is very transparent and strangely melodic, and the drama is gripping. If you have begun to weary of endless versions of Boheme, Traviata and Carmen, and can appreciate the aforementioned works, you owe it to yourself to check this out.