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Last year when I read that Pierre Boulez had conducted Janacek’s From the House of the Dead, and that it would be made available on DVD, I was surprised and thrilled. Surprised because I never really thought Boulez would conduct something as “primitive” as Janacek. (Primitive is how Boulez describes the music in the accompanying notes, though in a very positive way.) Thrilled because I had to hear it. How would so uncompromising a conductor handle such music? Throw in a Patrice Chereau staging, and I had to have it. (Some people of course loathe the Boulez / Chereau Ring. I rather fancy it.)
Boulez and colleagues deliver. Boulez’s take is definitely different from Charles Mackerras’, the only other version I’ve heard so far. Mackerras is more fluid, more in tune with the vocal requirements and inflections of the text – so crucial in Janacek – and boasts a somewhat warmer sound and feel, though his take is by no means soft and fluffy. It’s hard-edged as it should be. Boulez’s take is harder, more astringent, more propulsive, more explosive, and more intense. (The climaxes really hit home.) His approach reminds me of his uncompromising take on Wozzeck, an approach I confess to enjoying. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra plays with precision and intensity and superb clarity, as one would expect from a band working with this conductor, and the Arnold Schoenberg Choir sing most precisely and effectively. Of course, Mackerras has the Viennese in his recording, so it’s not like that recording suffers from anything other than superb playing and singing.
The singers all do a very good job for Boulez, though the more thoroughly Czech cast that Mackerras uses has the edge in timing and command of the words. Since there really are no main characters in the same sense as most operas, one never really gets to really focus on one or two or three characters. Of course, with the story in this opera that only makes sense. Some of the acting that accompanies the singing is quite good, some less good, but taken as a whole, it works rather well.
Chereau’s staging works splendidly. Rather than recreate a 19th Century Russian prison camp, he goes for a grim, gray, all faux-concrete stage with towering walls, thus adding a degree of timelessness. It’s at once oppressive and sparse and liberating. Liberating in the sense that one gets to focus only on the music and singing and acting, certainly not in any way for the prisoners. Combined with Janacek’s music and setting of Dostoyevsky’s text, it makes one (perhaps only almost) pity the fate of the prisoners. They are, after all, humans who made human mistakes, however awful. But then is killing ever excusable? Is the isolation and suffering in prison? Whatever one’s opinions on such issues, Janacek’s opera provides a human-scaled work that packs a punch. Rather like Wozzeck, I suppose, though totally different.
Sound is superb and the image quality is quite fine. Direction is quite good too, with even the close-ups serving a dramatic purpose. Plus one gets to see Boulez conduct a bit, something missing from the Ring and Pelleas. Certainly this is one of my purchases of the year.
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