From the House of the Dead

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From the House of the Dead (Z Mrtvého Domu in Czech) is an opera by Leoš Janáček. The libretto was translated and adapted by the composer from the novel by Dostoyevsky. It was the composer's last opera, premiered two years after his death on 12 April 1930 in Brno.

Janáček worked on this opera knowing that it would be his last, and for it he broke away from the habit he had developed of creating characters modeled on his love interest Kamila Stösslová (although the themes of loneliness and isolation can clearly be seen as a response to her indifference to his feelings). There are, in fact, almost no female characters, and the setting, a Siberian prison, offers up a large ensemble cast instead of one or several prominent leads. There is no narrative to the piece as a whole, but individual characters narrate episodes in their lives, and there is a "play-within-a-play" in Act 2.

From the House of the Dead was virtually finished when Janáček died. Two of his students, believing the orchestration was incomplete, "filled out" large portions of the score, as well as adapting the ending to be more optimistic in tone. Decades later, a version closer to the composer's intentions superseded that version, and is most often heard today. Some productions, however, still use the ending adapted earlier, as it lessens the bleakness of the story.