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The Metropolitan OperaMarch 6 Giuseppe Verdi: Attila March 13 Dmitri Shostakovich: The Nose March 20 Leos Janecek: From the House of the Dead Performance from Fall 2009 March 27 Ambroise Thomas: Hamlet |
Opera on WRTI
Saturdays, 1 to 5 pm
Each and every Saturday throughout the year, WRTI brings you great performances from some of the finest opera companies in the world. In addition to the full season of radio broadcasts from The Metropolitan Opera, you'll hear broadcasts from the Academy of Vocal Arts, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the San Francisco Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, and more...Saturday, March 20
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| Leos Janecek’s From the House of the Dead |
- Opera in Three Acts
- Text (Czech) the composer, based on Dostoevsky's novel
- World Premiere: Brno, National Theater, April 12, 1930
- U.S. Premiere: NET Television, December 3, 1969
- Metropolitan Opera Premiere: November 12, 2009
Leos Janacek's final opera, a drama of human resilience inside a Russian prison, had its Metropolitan Opera premiere on November 12, 2009. Esa-Pekka Salonen, until recently the widely acclaimed music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, made his Met debut conducting this powerful opera. Peter Mattei leads the ensemble cast.
"The opera is based on a book by Dostoevsky, who spent years in a prison camp in Siberia and later wrote about it," said director Patrice Chereau. "In Janacek's opera, life in the prison is incredibly alive, incredibly strong. There are many fascinating stories about the solitude of the prisoners, about their love...It's all of mankind in an opera, the whole of mankind is onstage."On the first page of Janacek's score he included a sentence by Dostoevsky: "In every human being, a divine spark."
- Cast bios, opera background, about the composer, story & music, synopsis--Metropolitan Opera website
The Cast
- Conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen
- Filka Morozov: Stefan Margita
- Skuratov: Kurt Streit
- Shapkin: Peter Hoare
- Shishkov: Peter Mattei
- Gorianchikov: Willard White
The Characters
- Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov (baritone): Newly arrived in the prison, Goryanchikov is an educated man who tries to keep a low profile while in prison. His presence in the prison parallels the wounded eagle also present in the prison.
- Skuratov (tenor): The prisoner Skuratov becomes so homesick for Moscow that he eventually slips into insanity.
- Shapkin (tenor): A prisoner who tells a story of how a police superintendent interrogated him and almost pulled his ears off.
- Aljeja (tenor): A young Tatar, wrongfully imprisoned. Befriended by Petrovich, Aljeja becomes delirious with fever after being injured in a fight amongst the prisoners.
- Filka Morozov (tenor): Imprisoned for a minor offence, he goes by the name Luka Kuzmich.
- Shishkov (baritone): Imprisoned because he murdered his wife.
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