Death is never far away in Leo Janaeks work : in The Cunning Little Vixen, the main character falls under the fire of a hunter, Katia Kabanova kills herself, Emilia Marty in The Makropulos Case has to deal with the hard consequences of eternal youth. From the House of the Dead makes no exception, especially since the composer knew he was living out his final days when he decided to adapt into an opera Fyodor Dostoyevskys eponymous novel, a literary work inspired by the time the novelist spent in a Siberian prison. This painful feeling of ineluctability pervades through his disillusioned and savage score, that recounts the hopeless life of the convicts of a Soviet concentration camp. In this place where life has already drawn out, in this no mans land forsaken by civilization, Janaek portrays the anonymous and daily sufferings, the abuses, the corporal punishments, but also evokes fragments from the prisoners past, bringing them back to life for the duration of a game or of a story.

Artists

Peter Rose (Alexandr Petrovic Gorjancikov), Evgeniya Sotnikova (Aljeja), Ales Briscein (Luka Kuzmic/Filka Morozov), Charles Workman (Skuratov), Bo Skovhus (Siskov), Christian Rieger (Prison governor), Manuel Gunther (Nikita, Big Prisoner), Tim Kuypers (Small Prisoner), Ulrich Re? (Old Prisoner), Boris Prygl (Cook), Peter Lobert (Pope), Johannes Kammler (Cekunov), Kevin Conners (Sapkin), Alexander Milev (Blacksmith/A Prisoner), Matthew Grills (Kedril, Prisoner), Niamh O’Sullivan (A prostitute), Callum Thorpe (Don Juan, Brahmane), Dean Power (Cerevin), Galeano Salas (Drunk prisoner), Long Long (Guard)

Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Simone Young, Frank Castorf