`From the House of the Dead' opens at Met Opera

NEW YORK — A different type of Deadhead will be heading to the Metropolitan Opera in the next few weeks.

Janacek's final opera, ``From the House of the Dead,'' was given its Met premiere on Thursday night in a production that featured the long overdue company debuts of director Patrice Chereau and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Based on Dostoyevsky's novel and sung in Czech, it was simultaneously grim and uplifting but always fascinating. It is not for the faint, containing male nudity and a brief simulated anal rape. The cast, starring bass-baritone Willard White, baritone Peter Mattei and tenor Stefan Margita, was first rate.

Unlike the season's first new production, a widely ridiculed Luc Bondy staging of Puccini's ``Tosca'' that sparked loud booing on opening night, there was near universal cheering for ``House,'' presented in three acts without intermission that breezed by in 90 minutes. The one common element was designer Richard Peduzzi. His dreary, cheap-looking sets helped tank ``Tosca'' but an equally dreary cheap-looking set of large walls was quite effective for a Siberian prison.

``House'' didn't appear on stage until 1930, two years after the composer's death, and students of Janacek completed the orchestration. The Met used the Charles Mackerras-John Tyrrell critical edition, which also can be heard on the DVD of this staging that was recorded two years ago at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France.

Rather than a linear plot, the opera features various prisoners recounting episodes from their lives amid the brutality of the prison with an overtone of yearning for freedom that is similar to Beethoven's ``Fidelio.'' Nearly every character of note is male.

The patrician Alexander Petrovitch Gorianchikov (White) arrives at the start of the opera, tells the Prison Commandant (bass Vladimir Ognovenko) he is a political prisoner and is flogged. At the same time, other prisoners play with a wounded eagle. Filka Morozov, going under the name Luka Kuzmich (Margita), sings of killing an officer.

Skuratov (tenor Kurt Streit) in the first act and Shishkov (Mattei) in the last carry the opera for long stretches. Alyeya (tenor Eric Stoklossa), a young prisoner who becomes friendly with Gorianchikov, is endearing. By the time Gorianchikov is set free by the drunk Commandant and the now-healed eagle is set free, there is a feeling of never-ending yearning in the human spirit, even in the middle of desolation.

Mattei drew the biggest cheers among the singers. There were some holdovers from the Aix-en-Provence production, led by Stoklossa, Margita and tenor Peter Hoare (Shapkin). The biggest change was in conductor, with Salonen taking over from Pierre Boulez. Having stepped down as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic last spring after 17 years, the 51-year-old Finn finally made it to the Met.

He drew an extraordinary palette of colors and coaxed strong vocal performances from every member of the cast and chorus.

Chereau, too, was a famous music world personality whose absence from the Met was glaring. Now 65, the French director has been known throughout opera since his centennial staging of Wagner's Ring at the 1976 Bayreuth Festival. Set in the industrial revolution, it was controversial when new but now in hindsight appears tame next to some of the really loopy productions of recent years. His modern-dress staging of ``House,'' with costumes by Caroline de Vivaise and stark lighting by Bertrand Couderc, was alive and vivid.

When presented at New York City Opera in 1990, ``House'' was sung in English. Having chosen to stage it in the original language, the Met strangely supplemented its regular seat-back translation with English titles projected onto the sets. It served to distract rather than illuminate.

There are six more performances through Dec. 5, and there will be a recorded radio broadcast March 20. This was a thought-provoking evening different from many nights at the opera, a disturbing descent into a vile and mad world that seems to be cutting-edge contemporary and yet somehow stays filled with hope.

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