From The House Of The Dead
Royal Opera House, London Until Sat
Performance
Production
Rating: 
In terms of performances, operas in the repertory and critical esteem, the Czech Leos Janacek sits alongside Benjamin Britten as the most successful opera composer of the 20th century. Janacek composed most of his operas in the final decade of his life – he died in 1928 aged 74 – inspired by his overwhelming love for a young schoolteacher, Kamila Stosslova.
If this were a concert performance, it would work magnificently. But sadly, this production was allocated to the Polish man-child Krzysztof Warlikowski. Above: Allison Cook and Johan Reuter
Prisoners play with inflatable rubber female dolls. Two fat men rub each other’s genitals. This stuff is both repellent and incessant. Above: Nicky Spence, left, and Salim Sai
Ironically, Stosslova was the unwitting cause of his downfall. It was while searching in bad weather for her 11-year-old son, who went missing on a mountain walk, that Janacek caught the pneumonia that killed him.
How much of a loss to music that was is everywhere apparent in From The House Of The Dead, his final opera, which is having its first-ever outing at Covent Garden, under the baton of the inspired Mark Wigglesworth.
The music – in this new edition by John Tyrrell, who has removed some of the additions made by Janacek’s assistants after his death – has such passion and intensity, it sweeps you away.
Janacek’s musical inspiration more than compensates for the depressing subject matter: life in a forced labour camp, from an semi-autobiographical novel by Dostoyevsky.
This is an exceptionally well cast show, with veterans Sir Willard White, Johan Reuter and Graham Clark rubbing shoulders with first-rate newcomers such as the Scottish tenor Nicky Spence.
If this were a concert performance, it would work magnificently. But sadly, in yet another miscalculation by Covent Garden’s former artistic director, Kasper Holten, this landmark production was allocated to the Polish man-child Krzysztof Warlikowski, who is hopefully combining his British directorial debut with his farewell appearance.
He makes a terrible hash of it, treating Janacek throughout as merely providing the background music to what seem to be his own adolescent sexual fantasies. Prisoners play with inflatable rubber female dolls. Two fat men rub each other’s genitals. This stuff is both repellent and incessant.
His disrespect for Janacek evidences itself in interruptions to the music from pretentious videos about why prison doesn’t work, and events on stage that impair our ability to hear the music. For instance, a youth relentlessly bounces a large ball on the floor. Mercifully, he is soon murdered, but then other equally disruptive stuff occurs.
Worst of all, Warlikowski’s labour camp isn’t anything like the black hole Janacek describes, complete with vivid music depicting the heavy equipment used. Warlikowski ignores all this. His setting is a gym in a US prison, brightly lit and full of all manner of street antics that often suggest the atmosphere of a nightclub rather than a labour camp.
Awful, awful, awful.
My advice is to buy the CDs. If you insist on going, take a blindfold.