From the House of the Dead – review

Grand, LeedsOnly Janáček, having based operas on singing foxes, zombie divas and day-trips to the moon, would make his final work an almost completely static drama, based on Dostoyevsky's account of life in a Siberian gulag. It is by far the most harrowing of his operas – possibly any opera – though the key to the piece seems to be the inscription the composer added to the title page: "In every man, the spark of God." You need to be a particularly patient fire-lighter to produce many spar...

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