Organization

Dirigent

Robert Kružík

Koor meester

Pavel Koňárek

Regisseur

Jiří Heřman

Set designer

Tomáš Rusín

Kostuum ontwerper

Zuzana Štefunková-Rusínová

Licht ontwerper

Dramaturg

Patricie Částková

Assistant Director

Otakar Blaha

Zanger

Tenor

Gianluca Zampieri

Filka Morozov

Peter Berger

Skuratov

Baritone

Pavol Kubán

Šiškov

Bass

Tadeáš Hoza

Don Juan/Brahmín

Eduard Martynyuk

Šapkin

Soprano

Jarmila Balážová

Aljeja

Roman Hoza

Alexandr Petrovič Gorjančikov

David Nykl

Opilý vězeň

Kornél Mikecz

Kuchař

Prison Governor

Petr Levíček

Stařičký vězeň

Zbigniew Malak

Mladý vězeň

Lukáš Bařák

Malé Vězeň

Josef Škarka

Kněz

Kateřina Kněžíková

soprano

Mezzo-soprano

mezzo-soprano

Jana Hrochová

tenor

Jan Šťáva

bass

Jakub Hrůša

Martin Buchta

Choreograaf

Jan Kodet

Placmajor

Prisoner 1

Kovář

Čekunov

Vít Nosek

Prisoner with an eagle

Prisoner 2

Vězeň Kedrila

Čerevin

Poběhlice

ND Brno

Tsjechisch

Z mrtvého domu

Brno

Tsjechische Republiek

Janáčkovo divadlo

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. The cast is exclusively male and made up of a collective, rather than of interacting soloists; a chorus opera from which individual speakers step out to tell their tales. The longest monologue of all, Šiškov’s, told in the quietness of the prison hospital at night, is emblematic of the whole opera: a harrowing tale constructed around a transcendentally gentle theme, just as Janáček’s own compassion threads through and transforms his grimmest and yet most uplifting opera. Despite an oppressive finale, Janáček wrote at the beginning of the score, ‘In every creature a spark of God!’ And this is this spark that inspired the National Theatre in the composer’s home city of Brno, to connect Janáček’s last opera with an equally distinctive work, his Glagolitic Mass. Janáček said of his Mass : ‘I wanted to capture here faith in the security of the nation not on a religious basis, but on a moral, strong one, which takes God as a witness.’ This live stream from the heart of Janáček country - offering a staged version of the Glagolitic Mass as a continuation of From the House of the Dead in a new critical edition by Prof. John Tyrrell - should bear new testimony to the power of faith in man and to the genius of their local composer.

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