What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

�The Tyger�, William Blake
�

At the climax of Nicholas Maw�s opera Sophie�s Choice, premiered in London in 2002, the title character has to make the horrific choice between whether her son or her daughter should be sentenced to death on arrival at Auschwitz. It is impossible to find a more appalling instance of man�s inhumanity to man, yet Nicholas Maw�s musical characterisation failed to capture the essence of that hideous act; a mere cymbal crash and extended orchestral interlude marked her choice. Whilst much of Maw�s music met the original source material (a haunting Emily Dickinson setting closes the opera), largely, however, the very acts described sit outside the composer�s musico-dramatic grasp, leading many critics to comment that the Holocaust was a subject not fit for artistic dalliance. Leo� Jan�ček�s last opera Z mrtv�ho domu (From the House of the Dead) does not aim to capture such a hideous episode in our history � though its depiction of a Siberian prison camp is brutal in the extreme � but its unknowing resonances through the last 100 years are palpable. What is more, Jan�ček�s musico-dramatic depiction of the Russian penitentiary portrays the events with such belligerence, such forceful realism that they take on a white-hot fervour, unbearable to watch or hear. As the composer wrote, �you know the terror, the inner feelings of a human being who will never cease to breathe: complete despair which wants nothing and expects nothing. This will be developed in my Dostoevsky opera�.

Since K�ťa Kabanov� (1921), Jan�ček had leapt from one stage work to the next. The Cunning Little Vixen (1924) came quickly on the heals of K�ťa Kabanov�, which in turn gave way to The Makropulos Case (1926, written from 1923-5). Following the premiere of Makropulos in Brno in December 1926 Jan�ček was without an operatic subject for the first time in well over five years. He wrote to his friend Kamila St�sslov� that �I have an empty head, i.e. I�m not preparing anything�. This apparent lack of creativity was only short-lived, though only outside the operatic world which he had so made his own. In 1926 Jan�ček had given birth to the Sinfonietta and the Glagolitic Mass, as well as the Violin Concerto and his Capriccio for piano left hand and various obligato instruments (written for the pianist Otakar Hollmann, who had lost his right arm in combat during World War One). Naturally, however, for a man who had devoted so much of his energy and life to opera throughout his career, Jan�ček�s theatrical urges had still not been satisfied.

From the House of the Dead first emerged as an idea in Jan�čeks �open letter� to his friend and colleague Max Brod, published in the composer�s local paper, Lidov� noviny on 12th February 1927. Although many of the details of the letter do not tally with the final synopsis, Jan�ček expressed his need to �go right to the truth� in his work, as well as his amazement with the Dostoevsky original � managing to find good in every man, despite the brutality of the prison camp. Yet whilst Jan�ček was willing to announce his interest in the subject early on, he was less prolific in his thoughts about this work than any of the other operas of his last decade. Kamila St�sslov� received snippets about the work, but nothing like the detailed exegesis which marked the inception and creation of K�ťa Kabanov�, The Cunning Little Vixen or The Makropulos Case. As such, we are given the opportunity to be fully imaginative in our own analysis of the opera, less driven by a blind pursuit of the composer�s intentions, and more ready to place the work in a larger context, without the wearisome references to Jan�ček�s biography (as with so many of his other works).

From a man who plundered his local newspaper for possible subjects for operas and song cycles, Jan�ček�s choice of Dostoevsky�s fictionalised account of his sojourn in the convict prison at Omsk in Siberia is not an entirely surprising one. Sent there due to his involvement in a politically liberal organisation, Dostoevsky�s memoirs, although classified since as a novel, are a precursor of reportage. The text itself is a conflagration of characterisations, where no individual, even Gorjančikov, has centre stage. As such the work stands far outside the realm of the �ego-operas� of Jenůfa, Brouček, K�ťa Kabanov� and The Makropulos Case (with Emilia Marty, the ultimate in operatic ego). Although unprecedented in its style, ironically From the House of the Dead is most similar to the composer�s sunniest opera, The Cunning Little Vixen. Both operas share an �ensemble� cast structure (though Vixen clearly holds both the Vixen and the Forester as its anti-heroes), they take their inspiration from fragmentary narrative forms (cartoon strip, reportage) and both brought out the most �symphonic� of Jan�ček�s approaches to operatic composition. The Cunning Little Vixen, the composer�s luminous paean to the Moravian countryside could function, as with his last opera, as a symphonic poem without need of the sung text.

During the composition of From the House of the Dead, which only lasted 11 months, incredible for a composer nearing the end of his career, the synopsis developed in a capricious manner. Jan�ček worked directly from the original Russian text, moving episodes around and cutting large swathes of Dostoevsky�s memoirs. Although he possessed both a Russian and Czech edition, only the former was heavily annotated. The various drafts of the score show numerous transliterations from the Russian into Czech rather than true translations. Even in the score found after the composer�s death were many elements of the original Russian, including its Cyrillic script. Jan�ček�s dramaturgical skill was so intensely honed by this point, after the �tutelage� of his previous eight operatic works, that he transformed Dostoevsky�s unwieldy reportage into an impressive operatic structure with relative ease. Whilst the composition of the work created no direct problems for Jan�ček, throughout his correspondence with St�sslov� the composer shows signs of being haunted by his own subject. He wrote on the 16th October 1927.

Saying the opera was finished was premature; there was still much work to be done. It is easy, however, to gauge Jan�ček�s feelings towards his new project; �that black opera of mine� he later called it. The composer became more and more eager to rid himself of the opera, saying that when the final tidying up was completed on the opera �a heavy weight will fall from me�. At the same time Jan�ček�s admiration for the opera grew. Although he announced its completion again to St�sslov� on the 4th January 1928, tinkering still continued well into May when the copyists� work began. As with many passages in his later works, From the House of the Dead is sparsely orchestrated. Jan�ček did not use manuscript paper; rather he took to writing his own staves on blank pieces of paper. The resulting score was a series of unordered pages, which were impenetrably difficult to read. As documents now the scores look incredible, though the copyists� work which ensued must have been nigh impossible. By 20th June 1928 a complete version of the score in the copyists� hand existed, finished shortly before the composer�s annual trip to his cottage in Hukvaldy, the village of his birth. Although he left Act I and II of the opera in Brno, both of which he had fully checked, he took Act III with him.

The trip to Hukvaldy this year was enhanced by the fact that Kamila St�sslov� had agreed to stay with him there. Jan�ček had added an extension to the cottage on the first floor, where Kamila would sleep. Jan�ček, 74 on the 3 July, can have little sense of the finality of his trip. Although the actual events are uncertain, whilst there the composer caught a chill chasing after Kamila�s youngest son in the forest. The chill developed into pneumonia and Jan�ček died on the 12 August in a sanatorium in the nearby city of Ostrava. In the clothes the composer was wearing was found a piece of paper with the following written on it.

Jan�ček�s final work was a confusing polemic to leave behind. Its subject matter alone was liable to stagger some, though more importantly the sparseness of its style was to prove most problematic. Many of the composer�s operas had suffered under the burden of re-orchestration by other writers throughout Jan�ček�s lifetime; unfortunately the same was to be the case after he had died with From the House of the Dead. Břetislav Bakala and Osvald Chlubna, two of Jan�ček�s most devoted pupils, took up the task of preparing the score for posthumous performance. Whilst the majority of the two students� work was in thickening the composer�s brittle orchestrations, perhaps the most surprising and gauche of Chlubna�s changes was in writing a new apotheosis for the opera. Rather than Jan�ček�s cyclical vision of the prisoners returning to their work, as we had seen them when the curtain rose, Chlubna had the prisoners shouting the words �freedom� to a resolute march figure. This optimism sat ill at ease with the rest of the work, and took away from the symbolism of the eagle�s release, which happens at the close of Jan�ček�s version. As time has progressed � as with the re-orchestrations of Jenůfa or Max Brod�s tinkerings with The Cunning Little Vixen � moves have been taken to reinstate the original orchestrations and the ending in which Jan�ček does not allow a complete sense of catharsis, rather a sense of man�s incessant inhumanity to man.

No other theme pervades 20th century opera in the same fashion as man�s struggle against himself, hardly surprising given the bloodbath which constitutes much of the century. Whilst Jan�ček�s preoccupations touched on deeply humane concerns, they manifested themselves largely in personal operas (centred on blighted individuals) out of which more corporate statements were created. Of From the House of the Dead a journalist in Lidov� noviny wrote that �the new opera has no main hero. Thus its novelty lies in some sort of collectivism�. The audience is faced with an ensemble rather than an individual facing a predicament, each the same, though all their crimes different, as we discover from the snatches of monologues coursing through the texture of the opera. Jan�ček�s concern is, I think, larger than an approach at ensemble opera. Written after World War One, precariously close to the collapse of Weimar Germany and the rise of the National Socialist party, the brutality of From the House of the Dead places it in a new genre of music drama � the humanitarian opera.

The concerns of the everyman were increasingly important to operatic composers. Gershwin�s Porgy and Bess, whilst far removed from the bleakness of Jan�ček and Dostoevsky�s Siberian penitentiary, shows a community, largely pitted against itself; the opera likewise thrives on �some sort of collectivism� and through its drama declares a pungent social commentary, mimicked in Kurt Weill�s later work Street Scene. Spurred on by the �epic theatre� experiments of Berthold Brecht and his advocates, opera gained in gritty realism, echoing the concerns found in the newspapers of the day. The heirs to the genre are clear; Benjamin Britten�s Peter Grimes and Billy Budd are advocates of the humanitarian opera form, and Grimes in particular was associated with the smashing of post-World War Two smugness on the part of the victorious. Likewise Jan�ček�s compatriot Bohuslav Martinů�s final operatic work The Greek Passion thrives on a community finding its way through disturbance and prejudice. Its destruction of the in-bred dislike of the refugee (surely an important contemporary subject in post-war Europe), its insistence on open spiritual richness in an increasingly secular world and its cyclical nature all testify to its humanitarian basis as a dramatic work. Billy Budd, with isolated setting and all-male environment, echoes most clearly with From the House of the Dead, though there is scant evidence that Jan�ček�s opera, which was first seen in London in 1965 (some 14 years after Billy Budd�s London premiere), would have been known to the composer of Billy Budd. Britten was heavily influenced by Alban Berg�s music. He was an early advocate of the humanitarian opera, though still dominated by the �ego� at the centre of his work � in his case Wozzeck or Lulu. Of all these cases, Jan�ček is most like Berg in his achievement, though through entirely different stylistic approaches and subject matters.


While Wozzeck is concerned with the plight of the individual, it is a polemic against society�s treatment of one another � positions of responsibility, the Captain, the Drum Major and the Doctor are all complicit in Wozzeck�s demise. Above all, Jan�ček admired in the work an understanding and a desire for �truth� in music drama. As he wrote in his open letter to Max Brod on his own forthcoming Dostoevsky opera, �were I thinking as a composer, I would go right to the truth, right to the harsh speech of the elements, and I would know how to advance a bit with the help of art.� Those sentiments are certainly echoed in an interview given by Jan�ček following the Prague premiere of Wozzeck, which became the target of political protest by Czech Nationalists.

It seems unfair of Jan�ček to place Berg and Krenek�s operas side by side, though his concern is clearly with the pursuit of legitimacy in opera. Krenek�s Jonny Spielt Auf couldn�t be further from the �truth-seeking� approach of either Wozzeck or indeed From the House of the Dead. Krenek�s use of jazz elements in his most popular work (with more than 400 performances in Germany alone in the year of its premiere) were intended to involve himself with a more fashionable vein.

Whilst Krenek�s own views chime with some of the concerns arising in a more liberal society following World War One, they ignore the directness of expression which Berg created within his works, assimilating both serialism and rich Mahlerian tonalities. Jan�ček�s directness of expression is another matter altogether. Rather than recreating the sounds of every day life, the prison in his case, or submerging them in a post-Wagnerian leitmotivic structure, Jan�ček directly expresses them to his audience. For some it is hard to look beyond the chain sounds of the overture, but they are merely the external trappings of an internal aim.

Robin Holloway�s description of the difference in Jan�ček�s approach to operatic expression of course echoes the aims of the opera itself. A humanitarian opera should, by its own virtues and the seriousness of its subject, not aim to please, but rather challenge.

Jan�ček�s last opera sits outside the realm of his other works. Whilst the Forester�s monologue at the close of The Cunning Little Vixen directly expresses the insight we ourselves should feel and the love stories and plight of the women in Jenůfa and K�ťa Kabanov� harness brutally wrought audience sympathy, the absolute fierceness inherent in From the House of the Dead is bewildering to audiences and scholars alike. It continually avoids analysis and indeed comparison with Jan�ček�s own life (by far the most popular element of Jan�ček literature). Most composers shy away from the brutal representation of the horrific elements of our human makeup; Jan�ček faces such a challenge head-on. Nicholas Maw�s Sophie�s Choice had all the worthy aims of a humanitarian opera � a subject most people are still loathed to consider � it failed, however, because it lacked the true genius composer�s ability, as with Jan�ček, to sting, shock and burn. Jan�ček, more than many composing such works, trusts in the music, as his medium through which the most horrific elements of humanity can be expressed. Such musico-dramatic insight allows audiences to begin to learn something of themselves.


� Gavin Plumley; written for the programme book of the Grand Th��tre de G�n�ve November 2004 production of From the House of the Dead (edited by Alain Perroux (illustrations from production photographs).