'From the House of the Dead' as Literature, Theater, and Music

By James R. Oestreich

With the New York City Opera safely (one hopes) up and running again, the spotlight swings back to the Metropolitan Opera in a season unusually thick with new productions. Next up is Janacek’s “From the House of the Dead,” in a staging by Patrice Chéreau that had its dress rehearsal on Monday morning and opens on Thursday evening...

So this production promises a particularly rich experience of the opera, and the prospect already has New York Times critics buzzing in realms beyond the musical. The basis for the work, after all, is a great literary masterpiece, Dostoyevsky’s novel “The House of the Dead,” which drew heavily on his experience as a prisoner in Siberia. And Mr. Chéreau, though best known for his work in theater and film, earned his operatic spurs early on, with his acclaimed centennial production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle in 1976 at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, which framed the work in the context of the industrial revolution. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/from-the-house-of-the-dead/