From the House of the Dead

From the Salzburg Festival 1992

Based on Dostoevsky's 'diary' of his years as a political detainee, Janácek's singular opera, with ist profoundly disturbing, but ultimately uplifting, message about the human condition, is set in a nineteenth-century Siberian prison camp. This Salzburg Festival production by Klaus-Michael Grüber graphically depicts the grinding tedium of life in this penal colony. A superb cast is headed by the great Bulgarian bass Nicolai Ghiaurov, and Claudio Abbado conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance hailed as a musical triumph. (Sung in the original Czech version)