From the House of the Dead with the correct Ending

I have been to the opera on Saturday. From the House of the Dead of Leos Janacek was played in Frankfurt Opera. The piece is the last opera of Janacek from 1928, first played in 1930, i.e. after the death of the composer.

Interesting is that his scholars found the opera and thought it was not finished and added a more positive ending to it. It was played like this for several years until they found out that the piece had already been finished and was lying at a copyist. In the fifties the piece was played in its original form for the first time. And the ending is not positive.

It is based on writings of Dostoyevsky and plays in a Siberian prison in the nineteenth century. We get to know several stories of the prisoners which are not really related.

The music is excellent and it was played wonderfully. The singers were okay – there were better performances in Frankfurt. The setting was abstract. They used the two coupled revolving stages that we have in Frankfurt intensively. I liked the production.