From the chat of the dead
La Cieca invites all you Deadheads to chat during tonight’s Met season premiere of From the House of the Dead. The chat begins at 7:45 pm.
Synopsis (from metopera.org):
Act I
The yard of a Russian prison camp. Early in the morning, prisoners leave their barracks to wash. An argument breaks out, and there is talk of a new prisoner, a “gentleman” named Gorianchikov. When he arrives, the commandant interrogates him and demands to know what he has been imprisoned for. When Gorianchikov replies that he is a “political prisoner,” the commandant orders him to be flogged. A prisoner plays with a captured eagle whose wing seems to be broken. The others admire its defiance in captivity. The commandant orders a group of prisoners off to work. Among those remaining is Skuratov, who begins singing snatches of a song, annoying Luka. Skuratov dementedly recalls his former life in Moscow, then suddenly breaks into a frenzied dance and collapses. Luka talks about his previous imprisonment for vagrancy. He tells how he killed an officer and was flogged for his offence. The guards drag in Gorianchikov, beaten half to death.
Act II
Some months later, prisoners are working outside the fence of the camp. Gorianchikov asks the young Alyeya about his family and offers to teach him to read and write. The boy eagerly accepts. When the day’s work is done, bells sound from the town, announcing a holiday. Townspeople arrive and a priest gives his blessing. Some men ask Skuratov why he was imprisoned, and he tells how his love for a German girl named Luyza led him to murder the man she was forced to marry. For a long time prisoners have been rehearsing two pantomimes, which they now perform: the first about Don Juan, the second about a miller’s pretty and unfaithful wife. When the show is over, bleak reality returns. A whore passes and a young prisoner goes off with her. Gorianchikov and Alyeya drink tea, which infuriates some of the other prisoners, who think it “gentlemanlike.” One of them hurls a jug at Alyeya, who falls unconscious. Guards rush in to restore order.
Act III
Alyeya lies in the prison hospital, delirious with fever and watched over by Gorianchikov. In other parts of the ward are Luka, close to death, and Skuratov, now mad and crying out for Luyza. Another prisoner named Shapkin describes how a police officer, who interrogated him after he was caught in a burglary, almost tore his ears off.
Night falls and silence returns, broken by an old prisoner lamenting that he will never see his children again. Prompted by Cherevin, Shishkov tells the story of his imprisonment: he married a girl named Akulina who allegedly had been dishonored by another man, Filka Morozov. But Filka later revealed that he had been lying about his relationship with the girl, who was in fact innocent. When Akulina confessed to Shishkov that she still loved only Filka, Shishkov killed her. By the end of the tale Luka has died. Only now does Shishkov recognize him as his old enemy, Filka. The body is carried away. A guard arrives with orders for Gorianchikov to follow him.
A few hours later, the commandant, drunk, apologizes to Gorianchikov and tells him that he is free. His chains are knocked off and, desperately, he says goodbye to Alyeya, who will stay in jail. The prisoners release the eagle, whose wing has healed, to shouts of “Freedom!” The guards order them off to work, and prison life goes back to its routine.
Peter Mattei sounded wonderful, much much different than Gerd. The tempos were much faster than on the DVD
Janacek really speaks to me. I am so glad I heard this.
That was lovely. Damn that pesky working for a living. I’d love to come to NY to see this.
I wish I lived anywhere within train or driving distance. I’d love to see it too.
One of the more musically interesting evenings so far this season
No Tosca-style booing here. Could be the biggest triumph of the last several seasons at the Met.
I came home from a dress rehearsal of Orfeo with David Daniels (wonderful!)and turned this on. I had seen the opera before and I was not much interested. This performance just sucked me in. I wish I were up there.
This is the first time I heard this opera. Being a non musically trained and ignoramus, I found the orchestral and choral part on Sirius stunning; but the vocal part colorlessly idiomatic that didn’t anything for me. I’d like to have a recording with only the orchestral and choral part. Period.
Constatine, I think you would appreciate the vocal score more when you understand that it is composed to reflect different dialects of the different prisoners. There is no melody per se, but the dramatic intensity of their emotional experience is reflected in the orchestral drive through folk song elements and many other pieces to give richness and intensit to the rather horrid existence many of these men have lived. If you read the libretto (which comes subtitled with the DVD) you will probably be able to appreciate it more. The final story told by Shishkov is especially moving and tragic. Peter Mattei sings it almost too beautifully. Gerd Grochowski sings in a more straightforward dramatic style on the DVD. I highly recommend you give it another shot.
I’m glad I heard this. I would love to see it live in the house. It was good to hear excited cheering from the Met audience.
This was a breathtaking evening at the Met. Many thanks to all involved. To find this kind of perfectly realized production of a score, I think you’d have to go back to such legendary productions as the first Wozzeck, the Merrill-O’Hearn Frau, and Dexter’s Carmelites and Billy Budd.
Chereau and company TRUSTED this wonderful music and they honored the work at every turn. I’m still completely stunned by what I heard and saw tonight.
I’m going down to the met tomorrow and getting tickets for several more performances. This sort of thing does NOT come along every day. Go.
Trusting the music is so important and in today’s regie, gimmicky environment is too often lost. How ironic that Chereau, a (perhaps unintentional) founders of the regie style, stages a production that brings opera to apparently closer to what the art form is supposed to represent, a union of music, acting, stagecraft, etc. Based on what I heard on the broadcast, I think Esa-Pekka’s conducting is more idiomatic than Boulez’s reading on the DVD. ESP is definitely in Makerras’s league.
Those of you who live in NYC and can see this production several times are so fortunate. The Frau and Carmelite comparisons may well be apposite (that original Met Frau still remains my most memorable evening in any opera house). As noted above, I’m seeing the very last performance of FTHOTD this season and after the prima broadcast, I’m anticipating it even more.
Lucky me. I hold 2 orchestra seats for Dec. 2nd.
Can’t wait. Janacek is a favorite of mine.
It is good to see such a positive reaction to Janacek’s work. It is also interesting that only 28 posts went up on Parterre last night, compared with the many hundreds that posted for Puccini a month ago, and other opening nights besides.
Please take our simple survey. Do you think that Parterre is a meeting-place for those with conservative tastes? Is Janacek simply not radio-friendly, a You-Gotta-Be-There kind of talent? Or perhaps in the final analysis it is a language thing?
Or you may have a theory of your own, in which event it would be good to hear it.
No, I don’t think Parterre Boxers are much more conservative than the general opera audience. And I don’t think Janacek is inherently radio-unfriendly. What is true is that this is a very unfamiliar work to most of us, so we tend to be too busy getting our bearings to have much to say about the performance while it’s taking place, beyond general impressions of how wonderful/horrible/incomprehensible it all is. (I’m looking forward to seeing it in two weeks.)
It may be that those of us listening were so enthralled by the performance that we weren’t posting. A lot of the posts are because Madame A or Tenor B sharped a note or the conducting was lethargic or whatever. Or because of the inane intermission chatter (which we were spared last night).
While it’s also true far fewer people were probably listening to the broadcast than Turandot my sense is most Parterrettes are open to worthwhile opera experiences of many types.
If it had been the prima of that incredible 1994 Met Death in Venice, posts would also probably been fewer than for, say, a La Gioconda prima. I just hope THOTD sales are better than the DIV boxoffice, which was catastrophic.
Can anyone who attended the performance tell us if the house was sold out?
I was listening but didn’t post because: 1. I had my eyes glued to the libretto; 2. there’s no “down time” in House, unlike most operas; and 3. yes, I was enthralled and deeply moved by what I was listening to.