Z mrtvého domu as Anti-Opera?

JanáĆek's putative status as a modernist ahead of his time is generally defended on the grounds of musical style. The question of this relationship to contemporary theatrical and literary trends, though, has received considerably less attention. If any of his operas were to be considered as challenging dramatic tradition, presumably his final opera, Z mrtvého domu (From the House of the Dead), would be the most obvious candidate. A deeply strange work, both dramatically and musically, From the House of the Dead has many anomalous features. This chapter will use one episode from that opera to explain some of those anomalies and to place JanáĆek within the context of Czech culture beyond opera.

At a 1966 New York dinner with Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, W. H. Auden reportedly described From the House of the Dead as an “anti-opera, with no characters and no tunes.”1 This description, while none too fl attering, is understandable. The opera is essentially plotless, drawing episodes from Fyodor Dostoevsky's autobiographical novel Memoirs from the House of the Dead without regard for narrative continuity. JanáĆek's libretto is only partially in Czech, with substantial bits of Russian and Ukrainian slang left over from Dostoevsky's original, some of whose meanings are still obscure. The cast is nearly all male, with only a minor pants role and three lines for a female prostitute for timbral variety (and this twenty-three years before Billy Budd). From the House of the Dead has no proper operatic lead. The nominal protagonist, Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, does not figure especially prominently for long stretches of the opera and is not set apart musically with a distinctive voice type or with solo passages of particular length or beauty. In fact, the longest narrations are given to otherwise minor figures. Šiškov, whose monster monologue takes up most of Act III, has no solo work in the previous acts. Further, the music includes no opportunities for sensuous vocal display, like the love duets in Káťa Kabanová or the glorious final scene of The Makropulos Case. Auden, who presumably knew the work from the 1965 Sadler's Wells production, had a point. Nonetheless, From the House of the Dead does not lack passionate adherents.