![\"janacekcleanup\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dingansich\/files\/2009\/12\/From-the-House-of-the-Dead.jpg\")
\n[the trash collectors]<\/p>\n
\n[the trash collectors]<\/p>\n
Leo\u0161 Jan\u00e1\u010dek, From the House of the Dead<\/em> Production: Patrice Ch\u00e9reau How to make a narrative of so relentless yet monotonous, time-ravaging and exitless an experience as life in this Siberian prison camp? Jan\u00e0\u010dek\u2019s oneiric, episodic opera\u2014a very selective adaptation of Dostoevsky\u2019s memoir-novel Notes from the House of the Dead<\/a><\/em> [\u0417\u0430\u043f\u0438\u0441\u043a\u0438 \u0438\u0437 \u043c\u0435\u0440\u0442\u0432\u043e\u0433\u043e \u0434\u043e\u043c\u0430]\u2014does not err that way. What does happen here: a death, an education, an unredemptive recognition, an evanescent collaboration. Only one of the men has a definite future outside. Other prisoners sing songs that refer invariably to their lives before, what landed them in the hope-shorn present. That one of them falls dead during this lean duration, hardly 100 minutes and sans intermission, gives us but an accidental glimpse into the men\u2019s collectively terminal prospects. (And when Filka\/Luka dies while Shishkov insistently, obliviously keeps singing, story-song takes on a Scheherazade effect.) Save the sparse chance encounter, enmity or complicity with one another from the outside\u2014we\u2019re never sure just how long ago\u2014they are joined only by their common condition. Save sympathy for and sublimation through a winged animal they tend back to flight, they seem barely related in feeling. These are men who have wronged and are wronged. Dostoevsky\u2019s stand-in, political prisoner Gorjan\u010dikov\u2014whose entrance launches the drama but whose own past stays unknown\u2014is the only character who attempts meaningful action within the prison, but his attempt to give young Aljeja a future (by teaching him to read) occurs only at the very margins.<\/p>\n Patrice Ch\u00e9reau\u2019s set of minimalist but hulking geometries and gunmetal grays in the prison yard, sparse thin-frame beds in the barracks, lends an industrial air to the premises. Over the course of the overture, materializing one by one from darkness, thirty-some prisoners slowly tread onto stage\u2014lifeless, lumbering figures in search of space. We see the joyless swinging of buckets, hear the cold crackling of ankle shackles. One man in a corner lights a cigarette\u2014retrieving something like personal experience thereby\u2014and in the darkness, by default, the spark and smoke mark him as almost individual. A brawl suddenly erupts between two men for no apparent reason, because in this place there\u2019s every reason, and the way their peers immediately converge at that wrestling knot to break it up reveals at once this group\u2019s self-regulation and, such bare and by now habitual restoration of equilibrium apart, disaggregation as its default. In this meticulous opening scene Ch\u00e9reau shows two other circumstances under which these men will readily self-assemble: the rough but swift lining up for sop ladled from buckets; the game to be had of kicking around a shoe as a ball.<\/p>\n The eagle, about which<\/a> there\u2019s been much<\/a> discussion<\/a>, soon suggests another, more poignant and more promising coming together. Upon discovering this wounded bird fallen into their midst, one prisoner starts running around with a blanket cape and stew-pot helmet in wishful mimicry. But other prisoners try raising the bird into the air. This image of arms raised aloft, the bird the high vertex of their bodies and their longings, was absolutely unforgettable. Having now seen this in person\u2014from the nearness of the tenth row in orchestra\u2014one can judge as moot the controversy surrounding the intended verisimilitude of this bird. Whatever Jan\u00e0\u010dek\u2019s vision, I\u2019m not sure Ch\u00e9reau intended this moment to constitute an event any more singular than the characters\u2019 cycling through of twice-told tales. Indeed, when eventually freed into flight\u2014to cries of \u201cThe eagle is czar!\u201d\u2014the bird is furtively tucked back, wings folded, into the old man\u2019s coat.<\/p>\n My favorite directorial moment in this staging comes during the transition between the First and Second Acts: an avalanche of paper rubbish crashing in from above onto the vacated stage, leaving the entire set smoking with dust and debris like some aftermath of war. Not manna from heaven but an injunction to useless labor, this mess draws the men back to slowly repopulate the stage with clean-up baskets and a heavy work-song. In an affecting use of real time, the stage by the end of the scene has been entirely cleared.<\/p>\n In the libretto, between personal histories and two pantomimes, some solitary lines cut through. \u201cA prisoner owns nothing.\u201d \u201cMy dear children\u2014I\u2019ll never see you again.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re my father!\u201d cries Aljeja when bidding his mentor and friend farewell, while Gorjan\u010dikov can only reply, \u201cMy child! I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll ever see you again.\u201d But of all the heartbreaking truths surely this is the most tragic: \u201cMy eyes will never again see the land where I was born.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong> [Z mrtv\u00e9ho domu]
\nWednesday, December 2, 2009, 8PM<\/a><\/p>\n
\nAssociate Director: Thierry Thieu Niang
\nConductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen
\nMain Cast: Willard White (Alexandr Gorjan\u010dikov), Eric Stoklossa (Aljeja)
\nStefan Margita (Filka Morozov)<\/p>\n