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
