Janáček’s last work, and his ninth opera, Z mrtvého domu [From the House of the Dead] was nearly complete when the composer died in 1928. The work used material – translated from the Russian by the composer himself – taken from Dostoevsky’s autobiographical, but apparently, somewhat fictionalised, memoir of life in a Siberian prison camp, Notes from the House of the Dead.
The opera is unusual, since there’s really no overarching story line; individual prisoners simply step out of the chorus to tell of their previous lives and the reasons for their incarceration. The result is a powerful but dark work, well suited to the musical vocabulary of late Janáček.
0:00 Act 1
28:40 Act 2
1:00:10 Act 3
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The Art of Listening 