Volume 57, Number 1 · January 14, 2010
Sparks of God
By Geoffrey O'Brien
From the House of the Dead
an opera by Leo Janáček, staged by Patrice Chéreau and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen
at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, November 12–December 5, 2009
'That black opera of mine is giving me plenty of work,' Leoš Janáček wrote in a letter to his muse Kamila Stösslová in November 1927. He was seventy-four, and From the House of the Dead was to be his last opera, written in little over a year and barely finished, if finished at all. 'It seems to me as if in it I am gradually descending lower and lower, right to the depths of the most wretched people of humanity. And it is hard going.'[1]
Review, 3153 words
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