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.
Gianluca Zampieri
as Luka (Filka Morozov)
Roman Hoza
as Alexandr Petrovič Gorjančikov
Jarmila Balážová
as Aljeja / Young Tatar
Peter Berger
as Skuratov
Pavol Kubáň
as Šiškov
Jan Šťáva
as Prison Governor
Zbigniew Malak
as Tall Prisoner / Young Prisoner / Voice in Steppe / Prisoner 3
Lukáš Bařák
as Short Prisoner / Prisoner 1 / Blacksmith / Čekunov
Eduard Martynyuk
as Šapkin / Drunk Prisoner / Cheerful Prisoner
Vít Nosek
as Prisoner with the Eagle / Prisoner 2 / Kedril / Čerevin
Petr Levíček
as Elderly Prisoner
Tadeáš Hoza
as Prisoner A / Don Juan / The Brahmin
