
Can the darkest moments of life also lift our souls? Drawing on his own experience in a Siberian prison in the company of misfits, murderers and theives, Dostoevsky was inspired to write his novel Notes from a Dead House, telling his brother at the time: ‘Believe me, there were among them deep, strong, beautiful natures, and it often gave me great joy to find gold under a rough exterior.’ In Janáček’s hands, Dostoevsky’s inspiration and the raw material drawn from an appalling world of incarceration find an even more powerful form of expression in his last opera, From the House of the Dead. Unfettered by conventional story-telling, Janáček wrote his own libretto, freely weaving together a series of stories of everyday prison life and of the fates of individual convicts.

as Luka (Filka Morozov)

as Alexandr Petrovič Gorjančikov

as Aljeja / Young Tatar

as Skuratov

as Šiškov

as Prison Governor

as Tall Prisoner / Young Prisoner / Voice in Steppe / Prisoner 3

as Short Prisoner / Prisoner 1 / Blacksmith / Čekunov

as Šapkin / Drunk Prisoner / Cheerful Prisoner

as Prisoner with the Eagle / Prisoner 2 / Kedril / Čerevin

as Elderly Prisoner

as Prisoner A / Don Juan / The Brahmin

as Priest

as Cook

as Prisoner B / Fierce Prisoner

as Prostitute

as Guard 1

as Eagle

as Luisa

as Aljeja's Mother

as Akulina

as Self – Conductor