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CHAPTER I

THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD

Introduction
The Story of Act I
Dostoevsky's Novel - its Relation to the Opera: Act I
The Overture
The Music of Act I
The Story of Act II
Dostoevsky's Novel - its Relation to the Opera: Act II
The Music of Act II
The Story of Act III
Dostoevsky's Novel - its Relation to the Opera: Act III
The Music of Act III
Note

Part 1 Part2 Part3 Part 4

Introduction

Janáček visited London only once in his life-during April-May 1926 at the time of the General Strike-at the invitation of an influential group of English musicians headed by Rosa Newmarch who, at that time, was the leading propagandist of Czech music in Britain. Others on the committee were Sir Henry Wood, Adrian Boult, Sir Hugh Allen and Vaughan Williams. Janáček’s music was then little known in England although his operas (particularly Jenůfa) were becoming increasingly popular elsewhere. In the same year as Janáček visited London, Jenůfa was played in about seventy different opera houses: the first English production, however, did not occur till thirty years later.

Anyone interested in the details of Janáček’s London visit should read the account written by his secretary, Jan Mikota, who travelled with him-Leos Janáček in England (published in Listy Hudební matice, vol. 5, p. 257). The chief works performed at the London concert were the "Kreutzer Sonata" string quartet and the Suite for wind sextet "Mladi", works which the composer said (in a speech at the London-Czechoslovak Club) he could write in one evening, or in two or three days. But, he said, he had other works which took many years to compose. These were operas which might one day be heard in London. "In them alone", continued Janáček, "can the Czech nation he known as it really is-firm, steadfast, unflinching-in its true appearance."

Thanks mainly to the energy and enthusiasm of Norman Tucker, the former Artistic Director of the Sadler’s Wells Opera Company, English audiences have now heard The Makropulos Case, Sharp-Ears and Kátja  Kabanová in addition to the Covent Garden production of Jenůfa. The excellent English translations of most of these operas are also the work of Mr. Tucker.

Janáček’s visit to the London Zoo in 1926 was a unique experience for him-and also an important occasion for the animals if they had only known it. Probably for the first time in history, the different cries of monkeys, the sounds emitted by seals and a walrus, were recorded in musical notation by Janáček in one of the notebooks he always carried around with him for noting speech melodies. Certainly, such animal cries were never before or since recorded more accurately, for the theory of the Melodic Curves of Speech was Janáček’s own, and one which profoundly influenced his very personal compositional style. He has said that when anyone spoke to him he listened more to the tonal modulations in the voice than to the speaker’s words. From this he claimed that he knew what the person was like, what he felt, whether he was lying, agitated or merely making polite conversation. "I can even feel, or rather hear, any hidden sorrow", he explained. "Life is sound, the tonal modulations of the human speech. For me, music emanating from instruments, whether in the works of Beethoven or of any other composer, contains little truth. Every living creation is filled with the deepest truth. I have been noting speech melodies since the year 1897. I have a vast collection of note-books-they are my window through which I look into the soul. They are of the utmost importance to dramatic music." (Lierarni svet, vol. 1, 1928, translated by Geraldine Thomsen).

Janáček’s mania for annotation of speech has an English counterpart in one of Bernard Shaw’s richest and most explosive characters-the notorious Professor Henry Higgins of Pygmalion-later of My Fair Lady fame, whose life-study was phonetics and who recorded on paper and discs every dialect he could lay his eager ears and instruments on, with a street-by-street discrimination and an unbelievable fastidiousness of detail ("A mixture of forty-seven different vowel sounds, my dear Pickering!").

Higgins’ early experiments with his Galatea from Covent Garden compare with Janáček’s experiment with the pageboys in his London hotel, except that the Czech went beyond the literary focus of words and pierced to the individual musical quality of the sounds and, of course, used his studies to create an individual musical idiom of his own.

It was inevitable that the absorbing interest he took in this special subject would also influence his instrumental ideas and, indeed, instrumental motifs derived or inspired by the melodic curves of speech occur in all his mature purely instrumental works as well, of course, as in his vocal works which have instrumental accompaniment.

Janáček’s instrumental themes are notoriously brief, usually consisting of only a few notes: it was his particular genius that he would give these few notes a wealth and variety of musical meaning, and certainly no other composer ever achieved so much with so little material. One may take leave to doubt, however, whether speech is not far too subtle in its pitch variations and far too fluid in its rhythms to fit into the rigid 5 lines-4 spaces limits of our music paper. Let us rather say that Janáček got the pitch-content of the speech phrases he heard and instantly streamlined and adjusted them to fit our Western-tempered scale system. Certain musicologists have closely related the difference between traditional folk music of various countries to the different speech habits of the people in these countries. As early as 1906, Janáček was advocating a plan for a musical dictionary of the Czech language. Such a standardization of the sound content of language was impractical because the melodic curves of speech vary from speaker to speaker, from dialect to dialect: in any one speaker there would be variation according to mood, temperament, etc., as no one knew better than Janáček who during his London visit noted twenty different versions of the English monosyllable "Yes"!

An examination of the Janáček notebooks, with a view to determining the extent to which their contents influenced Janáček’s own musical ideas-vocal and instrumental-and, going a step further, to consider the relation existing between the vocal line and orchestral accompaniment in the operas, is a study some Czech musicologists must surely undertake. Several examples will be noted in the course of this book. Within the microscopic musical cells is to be found the secret of Janáček’s great originality and genius, and his compositional technique, of continually varying and repeating these short pregnant motifs which is a basic feature of his style, is also rooted in his speech curve studies.

Janáček finished the score of his eighth opera, The Makropulos Case, in November 1925, beginning his last opera, The House of the Dead, on 18 February 1927. In the interval of sixteen months, he composed the Sinfonietta, the Glagolitic Mass, the Nursery Rhymes and the left-hand piano Capriccio: he heard the first performance of The Makropulos Case, (18 December 1926) and Mr. Brouček’s Excursions to the Moon (19 May 1926), both at the Brno Theatre, and attended the Berlin première of Kátja Kabanova (22 May 1926) . A plaque was unveiled on the house of his birth in Hukvaldy, his bust -in bronze-unveiled in the foyer of the Brno Theatre and other honours (including his invitation to visit London) were bestowed on him: in fact he was approaching the height of his fame.

In September 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky was one of twenty-eight young Russian intellectuals who were tried by a court-martial for sedition. "Tens of millions of labourers toil all day long, in sunshine and rain, tilling the soil which is not theirs, that it may give them of its scanty fruit", declared one of the group. "To turn this life of torture, disaster, poverty, shame and disgrace into life, harmonious and abundant-that is our great task." Any such liberal and socialistic ideas could not be tolerated in mid-nineteenth-century Russia under the rigid rule of Tzar Nicholas I. The court therefore found Dostoevsky and his comrades guilty of sedition and condemned them to capital punishment by shooting. In actual fact, however, these sentences had been commuted to various terms of imprisonment by the Auditoriat General, the highest judicial body in the land and approved by Tzar Nicholas. The Tzar, with a macabre turn of theatricals worthy of a Dostoevsky character himself, allowed all the horrifying preparations for carrying out the death sentence to be observed-the men tied to posts, hoods over their eyes, rattle of drums, rifles presented and aimed, before a government courier rushed in waving a reprieve. One of the prisoners went mad: Dostoevsky was too stunned to react one way or the other. On the dossier relating to his crime the Emperor had written: "4 years (of hard labour) and then into the ranks with them" (i.e. six further years in Siberia) .

Dostoevsky’s experiences in the prison camp of Omsk are recorded in his autobiographical novel From the House of the Dead : later novels like Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Insulted and Injured could not have been written if the author had not himself experienced the blackest adversity and rigours of Siberian prison life.

From the House of the Dead purports to be the memoirs of one Alexander Petrovitch Goryanchikov, condemned to serve a prison sentence for the murder of his young wife. All writers on Dostoevsky identify Goryanchikov with the great Russian author himself. It would appear that as he progressed with the writing of his book the author forgot he had already established Goryanchikov as a convicted murderer, for everywhere else in the book Goryanchikov is referred to as a political prisoner. This lapse of memory could be accounted for by the fact that the work first appeared in serial form in the magazine Time (Vremya), a new and revolutionary journalistic venture which came out in 1861, that is six years after the time it is thought Dostoevsky first conceived the idea of writing From the House of the Dead.

Leos Janáček was at the height of his fame when he began composing the music for his ninth and last opera-The House of the Dead. As we shall see later on, Janáček had suffered much in the past from inexpert librettists: this time he made his own libretto which he did direct from the Dostoevsky book in its original Russian. The actual copy he used for this purpose, with the relevant passages marked by the composer, can be seen as exhibit 369 in the Moravian Museum in Brno, Czechoslovakia.

It has sometimes been said that Janáček’s adaptation is sketchy and inadequate, going little beyond stringing together a number of disconnected episodes from the novel. Such a view cannot be maintained after any intelligent examination of the structure of the opera, which reveals that the composer has constructed a logical and motivated plan, as brilliant in its own way as is the powerful, emotional, intense, descriptive and wonderfully characteristic music he also composed to the text.

Critics, too, have not been wanting who are prepared to dismiss Dostoevsky’s novel as a piece of first-rate reporting, but lacking the artistic, story-telling and imaginative qualities which make him one of the outstanding writers in Russian of the nineteenth century. Yet we know that his great rival, Tolstoy, placed From the House of the Dead at the head of Dostoevsky’s achievements and one assumes that Tolstoy’s reasons for assessing the novel so highly must have concerned themselves with qualities that went beyond mere reportage, however excellent.

Some critics, among them Rosa Newmarch (on p. 227 of her splendid book The Music of Czechoslovakia), maintain that The House of the Dead cannot, strictly speaking, be called an opera as it has no hero or heroine, no plot, no connective, no story other than the confessions of four convicts discussing their wretched existences.

A narrative sung by a principal character in an opera, particularly if it goes on for any length of time, can certainly be a tricky business. It is in the very nature of opera that a narrative sung to an orchestral accompaniment is unlikely to be as distinctly heard-and hence clearly followed-so far as word content is concerned, as if it were spoken in a play.

The narrative arias of Mimi and Rudolph in the first act of La Boheme are comparatively simple, and Puccini gives some of his most appealing melodies to voice and orchestra. In the celebrated "Santuzza’s Romance" from Cavalleria Rusticana the voice line is melodious throughout and the orchestral part, light enough in texture to allow the words, if reasonably articulated, to be heard clearly enough. Another famous narrative that of Pimen in Boris Godunov-is a kind of tuneful recitative with a rather austere and bare accompaniment befitting the story of a humble hermit. The last and the longest, and by far the most complex of the four prisoners’ stories in Janáček’s opera, is quite a different matter altogether to these examples, for it occupies 36 pages of the vocal score, involves ten different characters, seven of whom are speaking parts. We will see later how Janáček attempted to solve the many problems which confronted him in putting across, in narrative form, a complex story sufficiently rich in incidents and characters to serve duty for an entire opera.

The Story of Act I

The scene of Act I is set within the Siberian prison camp at Omsk on the bank of the River Irtys. It is early morning and a number of prisoners have assembled in the prison yard to wash themselves. They are sullen and dejected. A group of convicts are teasing a wounded eagle. Aljeja, a young and handsome Daghestan Tartar, appears. A tall convict and a small fat convict slang one another: they are interrupted by the arrival of a new prisoner, Alexander Petrovič Gorjančikov (who, for convenience, will be hereafter referred to as Petrovič). Although it would be wrong to make Petrovič look like the 28-year-old Dostoevsky when he was imprisoned, the matter of his age should certainly be remembered by the opera producer. The Commandant of the prison camp (Major Krivcov) -called "Eight Eyes "by the convicts on account of his eye-glasses-brutally interrogates Petrovič, speaking harshly and insulting him with studied callousness.

The Major is incensed at Petrovič because he is dressed like a gentleman and he sneers at his clothes ("The latest fashion from St. Petersburg, I suppose?") . He tells the guards to take them away and sell them, reminds the new prisoner that convicts may not possess any property and that the least offence will be punished with the lash. He tugs insolently at Petrovič’s beard, asking him what sort of scoundrel he is anyway-robber? bully? murderer? When Petrovič replies that he is a political prisoner, the Major loses all self-control, swears at him, strikes him and orders the guards to see that he receives a hundrcd lashes. Political prisoners generally belonged to the upper privileged class: an officer of inferior rank and birth would resent this and when placed in indisputable authority over such unfortunate ones would easily succumb to the temptation of making their lives as miserable as possible.

Aljeja, already attracted by the personality of the new prisoner, looks after him with deep sympathy as Petrovič is led out by the guards for punishment. His agonizing cries are heard off-stage as the convicts continue to tease the wounded eagle which for them represents a symbol of freedom. "He is the Tzar of the forest", the convicts chant in unison. The tall convict tries to free the injured eagle but with a broken wing it cannot fly but only drag itself into a corner.

The Major storms in and orders the convicts back to work. Some sit down to work in groups, others disperse with shovels and spades singing in harmony a plaintive convict song, "Never more shall I behold the country of my birth ", as they move off.

Among the convicts remaining is a merry fellow, Skuratov, whom Dostoevsky describes as a voluntary entertainer, a buffoon, who seemed to make it his duty to amuse his gloomy companions and who gets nothing but abuse for his trouble. In contrast to the melancholy song of the convicts, he sings snatches of popular songs including the jaunty refrain, "I was away when they married me, I was away at the mill". He is told to shut up.

Skuratov unburdens himself to another convict, Luka. "O brother, my dear brother, when I left Moscow my head came with me but my heart was left behind. "Luka returns the confidence by begging him not to call him just "Luka" but "Luka Kuzmič" or rather "Uncle". When asked if he had any trade, the jesting Skuratov replies: yes, he was a cobbler: but he only made one pair of boots and that was for someone who, as he neither feared God nor honoured his parents, deserved to suffer! He strikes up another merry song, dancing about wildly until he collapses from sheer exhaustion (All that he seems to lack is a balalaika!) The convicts take his extraordinary cheerfulness almost as an insult and are angry at his lack of dignity and restraint. "He is mad!" they say: "quite hopeless!"

Ignoring Skuratov’s unseemly outbreak, Luka turns to his neighbour who happens to be the young Tartar, Aljeja and who, like himself, is sewing a mailbag. He asks him for some thread remarking angrily that the thread supplied is damned rotten stuff.

We now hear the first of several confessions by convicts who from time to time find relief in recounting to their fellow prisoners the incidents which brought them within the arm of the law and landed them in this Siberian prison camp

Luka begins his story in a lazily casual, nonchalant manner-with a yarn about an old prisoner in the dock who, passionately declaiming his innocence, asks the judge what is to happen to his children if he is convicted. The judge pays no attention to the grief-stricken old man but keeps on writing and writing and when he stops at last, he has written the old man’s doom. The main subject of Luka’s narrative is how, for no real motive except for his own amusement and to boost his own ego, he knifed a Major in charge of a prison camp at which he was being detained. Luka is described in the novel as a little, wizened, sharp-nosed young convict, pert and aggressive and formerly a house serf. His fellow prisoners were scared of this Major, Luka continues, but not he. He borrowed a knife, hid it, and when the drunken Major challenged him arrogantly proclaiming "I am your Tzar! I am your God! "Luka got closer and closer to him, finally plunging the whole knife into his stomach. The convicts who have been listening to him ask excitedly what happened after that. Luka has broken his thread so for a moment is concerned with re-threading his needle. At this moment the guards bring in the beaten Petrovič. Luka, resuming his tale, tells how he was arrested and almost flogged to death. The gates close after Petrovič. A senile old convict asks him naively if he died. Luka calls him an idiot and in a temper throws the scissors on the ground. All watch the gates closing after Petrovič as the curtain falls.

In the only available printed vocal score of the opera (Universal Edition No. 8221) Petrovič’s re-entrance is indicated three pages later than that given by the composer. This revision is the work of the editors břetislav Bakala and Osvald Chlubna who have also worked out an effective curtain in which Petrovič prepares to attack the Commandant with an awl but is too weak to do so. There are three objections to this inserted bit of theatrical business. It is inconsistent with the character of Petrovič, as is subsequently revealed in the opera and as expounded in the novel: it is also unrealistic-where is a flogged prisoner, dressed for the first time in prison garb and newly brought in from punishment, going to find such a tool?-and no provision is made in the music for a dramatic twist of this kind.

Dostoevsky’s Novel-its Relation to the Opera: Act I

At the commencement of the opera, we see a number of prisoners who have just left the barracks, assembling for their morning ablutions. Dostoevsky describes the prisoners as sullen, envious, dreadfully vain, boastful, prone to take offence and great sticklers for good form. Not to be surprised at anything was regarded as the greatest merit. "There were some genuinely strong characters, the majority of them were corrupt and horribly depraved. Slander and backbiting went on incessantly. But no one dared to rebel against the rules and the accepted customs of the prison. Some who came to the prison were men who had become too reckless when at liberty, so that they committed their crimes, as it were, irresponsibly."

He goes on to say that almost every inmate of the prison possessed a certain peculiar personal dignity. It was as though the state of a convict, of a condemned prisoner, was a sort of rank, and an honourable one too. There was no sign of shame or repentance. "We are a lost lot", they used to say: "since we disobeyed our fathers and mothers, now we must obey the drum tap."

"We wouldn’t embroider with gold, so now we break stones on the road."

"The Devil must have worn out three pairs of shoes before he brought us all here."

The last bitter comment at the beginning of the opera -made by Luka-refers to the expected new "gentleman" prisoner, as opposed to the riff-raff miscellaneous collection of murderers, robbers, tramps, etc., who are already in the camp.

The above passages are quoted from an early chapter in the novel in which the author sets down his First Impressions of his fellow prisoners in the camp: as he becomes better acquainted with them and knows their individual histories, he not only modifies his first hasty judgement, but finds infinite compassion and understanding for his comrades in misfortune. This was also Janáček’s view, and under the title of his opera in his manuscript score he wrote: "In every creature there is a divine spark. "

In the introduction to his novel, the author describes the appearance and character of Petrovič-about 35 years of age (Dostoevsky himself was 28 when he was sent to Siberia), pale, thin, dreadfully unsociable, a man of irreproachable moral character who spoke very little and was considered by some people to be mad. This is the fictitious build-up Dostoevsky gives his hero, so it would be as well to accept the character as given by the novelist, rather than try-as some surely misguided producers of the opera have done-to make Petrovič look like Dostoevsky.

The cruel and brutal interrogation of Petrovič at his first encounter with the notoriously severe and sadistic Major is to be found on pp. 254-5 of Constance Garnett’s English translation of the novel (pub. William Hindemann, 1915). As this is still the most easily obtained English version of the novel, all page numbers quoted in this chapter refer to this particular edition.

The man who is flogged is not Petrovič but an old man known as "Z" who, it is true, is also a political prisoner and is given a hundred lashes for insolence. Readers of the novel can find this incident on p. 251.

Janáček throws together in sequence incidents widely different in character: here the only half-serious bickering of the tall and small convicts contrasts with the violence handed out to Petrovič a few minutes later; a moment after the new prisoner is marched off with nothing but years of cruelty and shame to endure, the convicts are fussing round a wounded eagle who attempts to fly to liberty and freedom but is prevented from doing so by his injured wing.

The episodes of the eagle occur in Chapter 5 of the second part of the novel (pp. 229-31) dealing with prison animals. It was certainly a clever theatrical stroke on the part of Janáček to take the eagle incident, divide it into two parts, associate the captured eagle with the entrance of Petrovič into prison at the beginning of the opera, and grant freedom to man and bird simultaneously at the end of the opera.

At the unrelenting command of the irascible Major, the guards have pushed and harassed the convicts back to work: Janáček now lets us hear three convict songs-a melancholy dirge-like hymn-"Never again will I see you, the place of my birth" (novel p 128) sung by the convicts while working; the lilting "When I was young I was a cook" (adapted from the verse beginning "I, the young woman have tidied my house" on p. 127) and the jaunty vigorous refrain "I was away when they married me, I was away at the mill" (p. 79) which develops into a wild dance by Skuratov, much to the annoyance and disgust of the other prisoners.

Dostoevsky states that few of the convicts’ songs he heard in Siberia were genuine peasant songs but in the main part "prison" songs and all well known at that. Some were mournful and depressing but there were comic songs too: many of the prisoners owned balalaikas, their sheepskin slung over their shoulders while they vigorously twanged the strings. Chapter II, "The Theatricals", gives further details about music in the prison camp which will be discussed later when reviewing the pantomimes in Act II.

The dialogue between Skuratov and Luka was taken by Janáček from pp. 80-81, where Skuratov turns in a flash, from robust buffoonery to maudlin sentimentality and back again, to reach further heights of hilarious extravagance.

The character of Aljeja only begins to reveal itself in the second act of the opera. In the prelude to Luka’s story, the trivial incident about the poor quality of the thread they have to put up with in their sewing, occurs between Luka and one Vassya for whom either the composer or his editors have substituted Aljeja: the matter is of little importance as Aljeja is also one of the sewing group.

Luka is classified as a Determined Character by Dostoevsky in the eighth chapter of the book: not only is he determined, but altogether a most unpleasant and contemptible fellow who likes nothing better than to cut a dash and strike terror into people. Janáček achieved great dramatic effect by combining Luka with Filka Morozov-an even more despicable character-whose swaggering, drunken, malicious and spiteful conduct is exposed in the final convict’s story in the opera-the story of Akulka and her stupid, brutal husband. Luka’s story is to be found on pp. 101-2 of the novel and is taken over word for word by Janáček. The attempted attack on the Major, inserted by the editors of the vocal score, is hinted at on p. 13, and concerns the convict Petrov. Incidentally, Petrov is one of the more striking convicts and possibly the most dangerous criminal in the prison-capable of murdering a man for the price of a pint of vodka, yet on other occasions disdaining thousands of roubles. Both Petrov and a convict with a similar nature called Orlov-a man capable of murdering old men and children in cold blood-find no place among Janáček’s characters, although they might possibly have done so.

Janáček’s libretto shows the hand of a highly skilled, highly gifted and very experienced writer: he has fused incidents great and small into an acceptable, well-knit and motivated whole presenting a vivid picture of criminal life in a Siberian prison.

The Overture

It has been said that Janáček used in his Overture material intended for a violin concerto to be called ‘Wanderings of the Soul", which he planned during his London visit of 1926. At first thought it may be surprising to consider that such material would serve so widely different a purpose-to make an effective prelude befitting the mood of one of the most heart-rending tales of suffering and oppression ever put on the stage. Yet, basically, a concerto is a conflict between soloist and orchestra-an individual instrument in opposition to a mass of instruments: and in the few places where the solo violin asserts itself (four bars prior to [2], and at [5] of the vocal score) it is soon swept under by the overpowering mass of orchestral tone in much the same way as the individualism of a convict is swamped by the dead-pan level of the mass of convicts and by the voice of authority. But, apart from this, Janáček never experienced any difficulty in taking music he had written specifically to fit a particular mood, character or incident and adapting it to quite different purposes: indeed, there are innumerable instances of such metamorphoses to be found in this opera.

The Overture is cast in Rondo form with the harrowing, relentless, high-pitched opening theme recurring four times during the course of the Overture like some horrible dream or presentiment which refuses to be thrown off-

No. 1 is immediately repeated but with an extra crotchet added to figure (a) so that we hear No. 1 with new accentuations-a characteristic Janáček "variation". The whole theme is now repeated by the full orchestra: throughout the Overture we always hear it in the home key of A flat minor, a favourite key of Janáček’s.

Episode I begins with a quick waltz variation of No. 1 on a trumpet (note the sinister A pizzicato on the cellos). A solo violin plays No. 2 which again is immediately repeated in a new duple rhythm (waltz and polka measures alternating-see pp. 177-8 for a further example).

No. 2 covers the notes in the double third motif of No. 1 and, having the same downward twist at the end and finishing on a long note, may be considered a metamorphosis-or variation-of the opening theme. The solo violin now plays it in quicker notes as a short quasi-cadenza passage, continuing in even quicker-and almost unplayable-notes, while the orchestra continues with No. 2. The tempo speeds up to presto: duple and triple time fragments appear and disappear in a flash (xylophone trill and punctuated horn chromatics adding to the excitement) but the restless hysteria of the music stops when the sledge-hammer blows of No. 1-grounded on a solid secondary seventh chord-returns (first return of the Rondo theme-p. 3 at Tempo I) . Like a typical Bach instrumental ritornello, Janáček’s themes may be "nobbled" off at different places-shortened or lengthened, added or subtracted-thus opening up new development possibilities for them. Thus, in the development section which follows, the principal theme stops short at fig. (B) of No. 1 and we hear it as a solo line on a succession of instruments-muted horn [3], oboe and cor anglais (p. 4, bar 3), trombone and celli with a sombre end-sequence (bars 7-10), horn and celli, oboe and clarinet [4], and finally in a harmonious combination of trumpet, oboe and clarinet (p. 5).

This development section begins at a slightly slower tempo than at the start of the Overture, which grows faster and faster until, like some madly spinning star throwing off a potential planet at its equator, the music erupts into another whirling violin cadenza which is again stopped suddenly in its tracks by an emphatic tutti return of the principal theme (second reprise of the Rondo theme ([5] + 4).

During this development, an important new two-note figure in rising sequences has appeared as a counterpoint (see in the treble at [3]). It is worked up to a perfect frenzy of excitement (see from [4]). One might like to fancy that the main Rondo theme represents the relentless autocracy of prison authority, the solo violin the "hero" of the opera, Alexander Petrovič, and that the two episodes give a realistic picture of the bragging, drunken, quarrelsome mass of convicts, these "Life’s Disinherited" as Dostoevsky calls them.

To continue with analysis, after a quietly sustained top and bottom "queer" chord (last bar of p. 5), a muted trumpet (with violin buzzing triplets around it) introduces the middle contrasting section of the Overture: again one might be tempted to associate these angry trumpet outbursts with the vicious-tempered Major (No. 3)-
No 1.3

First and second violins keep screaming (A) of No. 3 as a repetitive syncopated figure, until a triumphant Fanfare Freedom motif appears at [7], in the bright key of E major-
No 1.4

The music continues to radiate happiness, enthusiasm and hope with excited bustling noises-in scoring, somewhat reminiscent of the Fair Scene in "Petrushka "-settling into a broad Maestoso [9] with trumpets ringing out (A) of No. 4 with an excited bell-like sextuplet group joyfully repeating itself on top.

We are now launched into the final presentation of the Rondo theme: it appears at a quicker tempo than formerly and with the trumpet Fanfare and the excited sextuplet group worked into the texture, ending on a triumphant but disconcerting note.

In the Coda (last seven bars) (A) and (C) of No. 1 are telescoped, with a fierce emphasis on the dominant ninth cadence chord at the first notes of (C) and, while continuing to harp on the notes of (A), the Overture avoids a conventional sustained ending-which Janáček always seems to abhor-by simply breaking off suddenly.

Telegraphic analysis of the Overture:

(A) Bars 1-15 principal theme always in A flat minor transition bars 16-24.

(B) 25-60 new theme modulating to A flat: C sharp

minor-B: D flat major-C.

(A1) 61-67 first repeat of principal theme.

(C) 68-100 development of (A).

(A2) 101-108 second repeat of principal theme.

(D) 109-171 middle contrasted section new theme.

(A3) 172-185: third repeat of principal theme.

Coda on principal rondo theme 186-192.

The Music of Act I

SCENE 1. ASSEMBLY OF CONVICTS (PP. 12-14)

By far the most informative book available to the English reader on the life and works of Janáček is that by the Czech conductor and musicologist, Jaroslav Vogel. (Leos Janáček, by Jaroslav Vogel (Hamlyn, London, 1962).

Vogel has this to say of the Theme of Destiny (or in a sense the theme of The House of the Dead which is the motto theme of the opera): "Dostoevsky at the beginning of chapter eight analyses the motive behind many of the crimes as the deeply rooted instinctive effort of a man driven by destiny to rebel at least once against fate and break his painful spiritual shackles in a desperate outburst of free-will only to find himself in a state of yet more terrible oppression. Thus also Janáček’s motif at first displays a mighty surging dissonance followed by a fall into a dark-sounding minor chord."
No 1.5

It appears in various degrees of tension according to the urgency of the dramatic situation: with agonizing intensity as Petrovič’s destiny leads him innocently-for he has done nothing to deserve this punishment-to be tortured (Moderato p. 24): deceptively gentle when Petrovič makes his first frightened entrance into the prison-scored quietly for solo violin and flutes with a cor anglais adding an acid touch to the ensemble ([7] + 5)-to be repeated on a high solo violin cantilena while muted trombones hold a low pitched chord (actually the chord of "doom" No. 5): with hideous unrelentlessness when Luka confesses how, with murderous violence, he attacked and killed the bullying major of his prison camp (at Adagio second last bar of p. 49) and grimly punctuating the wistful, poignant prisoners’ chorus when they sing of the land they will never see again (pp. 30-31).

It is sometimes scored all top and bottom- "basses and grave tonal instruments pitted against the shrill and acid tones of the high-pitched instruments" (Leos Janáček, by Jarosla Seda (Prague, 1954), p. 54) - producing a somewhat bizarre effect which disturbed the musical editor of the score, břetislav Bakala, and induced him on many occasions to fill up the middle parts.

The Destiny theme strikes a solemn note of warning at the beginning of Act I. To make its most impressive effect, it is best to make a break after the Overture has concluded its final strident notes.

A touching motif of grief
No1.6

shows us, right from the start, that the composer has sympathy and compassion for these outcasts of society who are shortly to appear on the stage. To the rough, brusque, vigorous motif
No. 1.7

the prisoners begin their ablutions: this devil-may-care jerking motif allegro minus its first note and in open octaves -either high up or low down-alternates with the sad No. 6 now adagio which stresses its pathos. A harsh motif suggesting pain (unison rising to an accented minor second) intervenes at the presto p. 13
No. 1.8

a moment later the young Aljeja appears (a florid variation of No. 6, with the "pain" motif in the background) and it is to this minor second motif that the convicts announce scornfully that their number will shortly be increased by a gentleman!

SCENE 2. QUARREL BETWEEN THE BIG AND LITTLE CONVICTS (PP. 15-18 first three bars)

The battle of words between the two convicts begins with (A) of No. 5, widely spaced and in a jaunty rhythm (p. 15, bar 3) followed by a trombone belligerently declaiming an arpeggio form of the first chord of No. 5 (chord of Doom) in an even crotchet passage, going over to a unison of violins and woodwind ([4] +4) and then jumping up to the top octave of violins at [5]. At this point a rhythmically enhanced free variation of the "pain" semi-tone motif No. 8 appears, first in chords (top of p. 16), then in open octaves (p. 16, bar 5 and at [6]) and as a compact harmonized little theme at [6] + 4-5.

As this continual variation of a motif of only a few notes is basic to Janáček’s compositional technique, the example 17A from Šapkin’s comic story in Act III is worth the reader’s attention, for it shows the derivations and variations - some by no means clearly recognizable to the ear-by which Janáček modifies his original idea. A most important factor in this motif variation and the means by which the composer can, if he wishes, give new identities to the same motif, is Janáček’s employment of different orchestral colouring for the different variations: no two variations in this example are heard with the same instrumentation and the colour text is suggestive of the changing ideas and moods of the text.

The timing of the retaliatory insults between the big and little convicts is masterly-just enough silence between each entry to allow the other to think up a comeback. The way in which Janáček leaves unaccompanied the droll "Which sort? "This sort!" back-chat inanity of low-grade music hall comedy is also excellent.

SCENE 3. Petrovič AND THE MAJOR

([7] to [12]+5)

At a time when many musicians young and old who prided themselves on their progressive outlook in music nevertheless drew the line at accepting so revolutionary a work as Wozzeck, the 73-year young-old Janáček fully appreciated the dramatic genius of Berg and the greatness of his opera, which, incidentally, had to be withdrawn from the repertoire of the Prague National Theatre after three performances on account of public protests and demonstrations. In an interview with Literarni Svet Janáček said in his characteristic explosive manner: "Injustice to Wozzeck, and a serious injustice to Berg. As a dramatist Berg is both serious and sincere. Let him have his say. Today he may be silenced-he suffers-he is distraught his music is covered with blood."

Perhaps only a Czech can appreciate to the full the truth and realism of the speech curves in this non-lyrical opera and, while there is no Schoenbergian Sprechgesang ever indicated by the composer, in moments of great excitement and high passion there is a near approach to it and performers are not slow to abandon all pretence at singing in preference for highly declaimed speech at critically dramatic points.

To continue our analysis: from [7], after two thundering entries of the first two notes of the Destiny motif (trumpets and horns above a drum roll), a solo violin introduces very deliberately a descending enhanced secondary seventh chord in arpeggio. The voice of a solo stringed instrument for the entry of Petrovič is further evidence that the alleged adaptation of a violin concerto here is perfectly justifiable and in keeping with the conflict between an individual and militant authority which we are witnessing. A long solo roll on the military drum, an angry motif of five notes on muted trombones cuts into the texture like a whiplash; in ten seconds Janáček has depicted the spiteful, purple, pimply-faced Major Krivcov who now enters like "a malicious spider running out to pounce on to some poor fly that has fallen into his web".

Although Janáček carries the characteristic leaping seventh of this Major’s motif over into the voice part and thereafter meticulously indicates the pitch of the whole speech, he might just as well have written the part parlante to a rhythm-or used the half-speech, half-song notation of the first 12-tone composers which was current at that time, for the actor who takes the part of the Commandant generally barks and shouts his way through the part, hoping thus to give a more realistic impression of the man’s ferocious character. The music is correspondingly violent. There has never been a composer who could express so much in so few notes: Janáček has a genius for compression, for inventing microscopic musical cells which are not only pregnant with meaning and strikingly original in their conception-judged purely as musical ideas-but which are capable of conveying to the listener clear and definite extra-musical ideas.

As this monster of cruelty and viciousness bullies and threatens the helpless newcomer, lashing himself into a frenzy of hate, Janáček similarly works up the malicious motif of the Major and its accessories, but at no point lets his orchestral forces overpower the singer.

The side-drum sets an official military note at the beginning of the scene: similarly, at its close, the hollow sounds of the timpani repeating a rapid four-note figure seem to seal the doom for the helpless Petrovič. An examination of the vocal score will show that bars 9 and 10 on p. 20 are developed sequentially at [9], that a variant of this-in diminution-appears 12 bars later, and that an important and forceful new theme (p. 22, bars 4 and 5) dominates the orchestra until the end of the scene.

The "twitching" convict theme No. 7 is resumed in its second quick triple-time variation form (reprise from [2]). Sounds of pain are heard from the tortured Petrovič-suggested perhaps by Cavaradossi’s off-stage cries in Tosca. (It has already been mentioned that the Destiny motif reappears at this point.) No need for this endlessly resourceful composer to invent a new "plain "motif-several repetitions of (A) of No. 7-stressing the upper note-are sufficiently realistic for the purpose. A few more taps from the timpani and we are finished with this unpleasant and violent scene. We are finished too with Petrovič for the time being-life moves quickly on-flogging is a commonplace incident in a Siberian prison-and the scene of the eagle which follows is one of the happiest in the opera.

SCENE 4. (a) EPISODE OF THE EAGLE

(Moderato p. 25 till [15])

(b) RE-ENTRANCE OF THE MAJOR (P. 29)

Janáček begins this with a motif consisting of a three-note descending scale stressing an open fifth, contrasting with it a spirited dance-like measure (strings and trombone (con moto)) suggesting that the convicts derive a lot of fun from teasing the eagle. The open fifth motif reappears on tremolo strings (Meno mosso p. 26) suggesting the laboured movements of the eagle with a broken wing: a quick run up of piccolo, clarinet and flute landing on a fp trill [14], depicts the flight of a bird to freedom; a moment later the prisoners sing in harmony

He is the Tzar of the Forest

Orel car Iesu!

This motif, the symbol of the freedom most of them will never enjoy, reappears again at the end of the opera: one notes, however, that the chord of "doom" is heard in the orchestra at its climax.

The insanely violent Major storms in, insulting and threatening the convicts, and the "doom" chord accompanies the guards’ shouts of "do pracé! do pracé!" ("Off to work! Off to work!") ([15] + 15 and 16) .

SCENE 5. CONVICT SONGS, ETC. (PP. 30-40)

After this noisy outburst both on the stage and in the orchestral pit, the ensuing adagio presentation of the Destiny theme is particularly welcome. First, we hear it high in the treble on an E flat clarinet with tremolo violins (p. 30): then in middle register on cor anglais and tremolo strings, followed by an extended presentation ([16]), in a mood of bitterness and despair on trombone and strings. It is infinitely pathetic and moving. The fullest expressive use is made of this theme here and in the next few pages during the choral episode. One feels an upsurge of hope as the melody rises in a crescendo to the fifth above where it is held for a moment in a kind of exaltation. Here is hope for a new life, for a life of freedom, of opportunities, of things which make life worth living. But when the melody wilts and falls back to a lower note the dream has vanished; here is resignation, acceptance of reality, bowing the head to an inescapable destiny.

As the prisoners settle themselves in groups to work, they sing popular convict songs. The tenors begin their song of homesickness while basses follow in plaintive imitation a beat later and a sixth lower. Nothing could be simpler than the descending broken notes of a major chord which is all that Janáček allots to them by way of a melody: nothing could be more effective, more moving, more expressive of infinite sadness.

An analysis of the various voice entries is interesting: if one takes the first notes of each of the five choral entries G flat, high B flat, A flat, G and F flat, they align themselves in the same rising and falling contours of the Destiny motif and collectively produce the same effect of hope changing to despair. Moreover, the second chord of each choral phrase is always the motto chord of No. 5 as a result of a harmonic clash between tenors and basses. The orchestra separates each choral entry with a new "variation" of the Destiny theme-variations of spacing, instrumentation, rhythm, dynamics and so on-so that, on examination, these seemingly simple pages are at the same time exceedingly complex.

The words of Skuratov’s first song-fragment ([17]) are paraphrased from the folk-song quoted in Dostoevsky’s novel. The "folk-tune" to which Skuratov sings them... a variation of the Destiny theme!... which seems a little inapt, but surely a conscious effort by the composer, as the accompaniment to his song consists entirely of one chord -the "doom "chord (major third and minor second) from No. 5, now in lilting waltz rhythm! In the distance-and almost inaudible-we hear the last echoes of the prisoners’ song preceded and followed by the emotionally stressed Destiny motif (piercing and agonizing) in its fullest pathos and despair.

SCENE 6. DIALOGUE BETWEEN SKURATOV

AND LUKA (pp. 34-38)

Skuratov launches into a noisy, lively ditty and is told by Luka to shut up. Much use is made of this Skuratov double motif-the bass figure in particular-between pp. 33-40, 135-9 of the vocal score
No 1.9

Janáček rings the changes on this theme, making it in turn sound impatient "Ne tedy, Luka Kuzmič" ("All right then, I will call you Luka Kuzmič if you want") p.34, bars 18-21: confidential "Ach, bratře, hlavo drahá!" ("O, Brother, my dear Brother") Allegro p. 35: sad and wistful "S Bohem, Moskvo" ("Farewell to freedom") at the sostenuto p. 36: saucy ‘’Našel se takový" ("The joke was"), etc., Allegretto p. 37: and pointed "Malý ptaček’’ ("Sharp-tongued jackdaw") p. 34, bars 9-12.

SCENE 7. LUKA'S NARRATIVE (PP. 42-53)

1st section, pp. 42-44 (up to the Allegro)

Dostoevsky tells us that Luka wants to be known as a desperate character noted for his reckless, dare-devil exploits and always on the lookout for some simple-hearted or soft-headed fellow prisoner to impress Janáček breaks up Dostoevsky’s sentences into short, expressive, staccato phrases: in the climaxes they come to us like bursts of machine-gun fire backed up by relentless surging orchestral sounds. There is a moment of compassion in the first part of Luka’s narrative when he tells about the sad old convict and the relentless judge
No 1.10

During this part of the narrative, the embellished first note of the Destiny motif taken over (Maestoso p. 40) from the end of Skuratov’s grotesque dancing is prominent (p. 42, bar 5).

2nd section, [25] + 4 to 49

For Luka’s bragging account of how he "laid out" the camp commandant, the composer has invented a suitable swaggering theme
No. 1.11

and works up the figure (A) to a fever of excitement. In the Holland Festival L.P. recording, the second part of Luka’s narrative concludes very effectively with the Destiny motif fading away in the orchestra and allowing Luka’s "Prevalil se "("He fell down dead ") to be parlante solo.

3rd section, pp. 50-53

These bombastic, boasting convicts, says Dostoevsky, make themselves out to be colossal, hideous criminals of an incredible strength of will; so to emphasize his toughness and nonchalance, Luka tears at the thread he is using for sewing and curses its poor quality. Janáček preludes this revealing incident with a return to the Rondo theme of the Overture which then appears in augmentation at a high-pitch level accompanied by a variation in quicker notes in the bass. This broad marching tune continues, alternating with a furious trumpet figure ([29] + 1) et seq. - a still further diminution of the last four notes of the bass figure referred to.

Janáček is inattentive to the return of Petrovič for there is nothing in the music of p. 51 to indicate this. Luka describes the terrible punishment inflicted on him following his fatal attack on the Major (the bass of p. 50, bar 9 harmonized and orchestrated powerfully with the fiery trumpet motif of 29+1 biting in-then a leaping figure, derived from the Destiny motif bar 1, combined with an angry trumpet figure quickly worked up to a powerful and "brutal" climax), dramatically declaiming- "Myslim, ze umiram" ("I thought I was dying!").

Janáček is again inattentive for he allows Petrovič to be led out at the end of p. 54, without comments from the orchestra.

The last eighty-odd bars of the act are given over entirely to endless repetition of the dual motif Janáček has associated with Skuratov, who is not even on the stage at the close of the act. The unrelenting insistence on this two-bar motif (swinging from E flat minor to B major) certainly creates a feeling of great agitation, excitement, restlessness and confusion, particularly during the uninhibited revolutionary music Coda-firmly in A flat minor-which concludes one of the most powerful and emotionally disturbing first acts in all opera.

The Story of Act II

It is usual to set Act I in winter and Acts II and III -which overlap-in summer, thus allowing the rigours of a Siberian prison in winter to stand in violent climatic contrast to the same prison under the kinder and softer influence of summer. Malcolm Rayment points out, however, that if one takes seriously Janáček’s note that a year is supposed to have elapsed between Act I and Act II, the setting of the entire opera would be in winter.

The scene of Act II is on the banks of the River Irtys, looking down the Kirghiz Steppe where a typical Kirghiz hut with its smoking chimney can be seen. Strains of a wordless song are heard from the distance. When the curtain rises we see the convicts at work: some of them are breaking up a boat, others are laying bricks: among the latter are Petrovič and Skuratov. We hear the cacophonous din of tools, spades, shovels-even the rasping sound of a saw.

A firm friendship had developed between the young Tartar, Aljeja, and Petrovič. They are talking intimately: Petrovič asks Aljeja if he has a sister, for if so, surely she must have been very beautiful. Aljeja’s smile is warm and tender as he speaks of his lovely sister-how much she loved him and, even more so, his mother: so much indeed that when this tragedy fell on the family his mother died of a broken heart. "She came to me in my dreams last night and cried over me", he sighs mournfully. Petrovič has developed great affection for Aljeja and-for his part-the boy is devoted to his elder companion. To create a diversion, Petrovič offers to teach Aljeja to read and write, a proposal which Aljeja accepts gratefully.

The convicts continue their noisy onslaught on the mast of the boat with Tristan-sailor sounds of "Hou, Hou", until it splinters and falls. Today has been proclaimed a holiday. We hear a symphony of bells. The Commandant enters accompanied by guards and guests who have come to see a display of theatricals arranged by the convicts themselves. In the procession is a priest who proceeds to bless the river and the food which is brought in and served. A few convicts prefer to jump into the river and have a refreshing swim. The more pious ones cross themselves. After staying a few minutes, the Commandant and the Priest leave. The convicts and the guests remain sitting at tables, eating and drinking tea. The cook-who is also a convict-passes around selling small portions of some particularly tasty bit for a penny or twopence. Prison cooks often did this: buying a large piece of liver, for example, at their own expense and selling it in small pieces to their convict comrades. But Skuratov has an exciting bit of news to tell them. He has just been told that a gentleman is coming from St. Petersburg to inspect all the prisons of Siberia. The convicts hear this with great interest-it could mean a bettering of their wretched conditions. "Let’s hope he chokes the Major", says the fat little convict viciously. "What’s it got to do with you?" a quarrelsome convict asks in some heat. "Do you know what you are? "the cocky little prisoner replies contemptuously-"A blockhead!" But Skuratov has already forgotten his piece of news which probably originated from one of the guards. He is overwhelmed with self-pity for his own wretched condition and proceeds to unburden himself to any in the assembly who will listen to him. "They sent me here ", he says balefully, "because I fell in love. It is true that through love I shot a German with my pistol. But was a German worth sending me here for, tell me that!"

Skuratov’s narrative is one which, despite its tragic ending, rouses our deepest sympathy and understanding, and we share with him puzzlement that a perverse and unkind fate should bring this simple, humble, shy, decent man to such a pass.

A Russian peasant, now a corporal, Skuratov was stationed in a fine large town where there were lots of Germans. He fell in love with one of these-Lujza-a young laundress who lived with her aunt. She was such a darling; he had never met a girl like her. She was prepared to marry him and they met one another regularly. On one occasion, however, she did not turn up for three days: he was nearly crazy, so he wrote to her that if she did not come he would call round to her aunt’s. She was frightened and came: it appeared that a distant relative of hers wanted to marry her: a watch-repairer, wealthy and elderly; surely he would not stand between her and this unexpected good fortune? Skuratov said to himself "She is talking sense! What’s the use of marrying a soldier! "But after she had left him he missed his Lujza so much that he broke down and cried. He learned that Lujza had been forbidden to see him, so Skuratov put on his overcoat, taking with him an old pistol-practically a toy-saying to himself that if they got tough with him he would frighten them with it, and marched off to the German watch-repairer’s home where he found not only his elderly rival but also Lujza and her aunt. The watch-repairer was angry at the intrusion and insulted the jealous young soldier while Lujza was looking on. Goaded by this, Skuratov drew out his little pistol. Far from being afraid, the watch-repairer taunted him and dared him to fire it. "If he hadn’t egged me on, he would be living to this day", Skuratov explains. Losing his self-control he pulled the trigger. The women screamed, he ran away but was arrested and sent to prison for the rest of his life. This simple heart-rending tale of tragic love is interrupted every now and again by a drunken convict shouting vehemently to Skuratov-"It’s lies-all lies!" The exasperated storyteller jumps on the drunkard, throwing him to the ground. Someone asks him what happened to Lujza. "Oh, Lujza!" he exclaims in despair, throwing his hands wildly into the air.

But today is a holiday and the camp convicts are out to enjoy themselves; so they start up a gay dashing Russian dance-song which they render with reckless dash and abandon. A crudely contrived stage has been erected and a convict, stepping forward, announces that the entertainments are about to begin. The first piece, he says, is called "Kedril and Don Juan". This turns out to be an embroidered version of the final scene from Molière’s play and da Ponte’s libretto of "Don Juan", with the Don’s fatal encounter with the Commendatore, additional erotic scenes with an ugly cobbler’s wife and a pretty clergyman’s wife worked in for good measure. After an endless series of female conquests, Don Juan-the eternal lover-knows now that devils will shortly drag him off to Hell. When the first batch of devils arrives, he successfully chases them away with his dagger. He tells Kedril-who is a kind of burlesqued Leporello-not to be afraid of the devils but to bring in Elvira and then start serving supper. When the struggling Elvira arrives, Don Juan embraces her. A knight storms into the room intent on rescuing Elvira. Don Juan engages him with his sword, runs him through the body; while Don Juan is cleaning his sword, Elvira runs off screaming. After removing the corpse, Kedril returns with food, pushing in front of him the ugly cobbler’s wife. She desires to be amorous with Don Juan but, after one look at her face, the Don is having none of her and, at a sign from his master, Kedril throws the ugly cobbler’s wife out of the room. Don Juan starts eating his supper.

A moment later the servant returns with the clergyman’s attractive wife. She is tearful at first but quickly becomes sportive, and a lively flirtation ensues between her and Don Juan. This is the cue Kedril has been waiting for. Seeing his master with his hands full, he starts eating greedily (the title of the mime-play in Dostoevsky’s novel is "Kedril the Glutton ").

As the amorous pair are about to retire to an adjacent loom, the devils creep out again. Don Juan shouts defiance at them. This time, however, the devils mean business, grab a secure hold on him and drag him off to Hell. Not a whit abashed, Kedril takes over from his luckless master, kisses the pretty clergyman’s wife and they both sit down to a hearty supper. A sportive little devil returns and pinches her behind. The audience is vastly amused. It is all very much as the supper scene in Mozart’s Don Giovanni with added flamboyant trimmings and buffoonery.

All the parts are played by convicts and we learn from Dostoevsky that considerable ingenuity went into the staging of the plays and that many of the actors displayed real histrionic talent. The rapture of the audience is beyond all bounds. Janáček has written a special laughing chorus which begins as a chuckle and grows to a roar.

Kedril announces the second piece, "The Pantomime of the Beautiful Miller’s Wife". This proves to be a tale of amorous intrigue with an Arabian Night’s touch about it. It is, in fact, a traditional Russian folk-tale previously treated operatically by Moussorgsky in Sorochintsy Fair and Tchaikovsky in Cherevichki. A miller is about to depart and indicates that his wife must not admit anyone in his absence ... or else! ... he points to a whip. She starts to spin: there is a knock at the door and a neighbouring miller appears, bringing her a red handkerchief as a present. As he attempts to embrace her there is another knock on the door. She is frightened and hurriedly hides him under the table. This time her admirer is an army clerk who enters and bows to her in a courtly and dignified manner. He advances, stops, inflates his chest, looks proudly around him and with the long strides of a hero in a classic drama moves confidently up to the wife. The clerk has hardly reached the middle of the room when there is a further knock which throws the woman into a flutter again. Where is she to hide him? The clerk creeps into a chest and she shuts the lid on him. Her next would-be lover is a different sort of visitor altogether-a Brahmin dressed as such but actually Don Juan in disguise. As he embraces the miller’s wife there is a further interruption: heavy knocks on the door this time and that can mean only one thing-the return of the miller. The frightened wife is beside herself: Don Juan (as the Brahmin) hides in a sack. The wife recommences her spinning, in her agitation fingering an imaginary thread and turning an imaginary distaff. The husband storms in: he has been on the watch and has seen it all. He quickly locates the neighbouring miller and the army clerk and throws them out. Don Juan climbs out from the sack; as he does so his disguise falls off. Shouting "Cursed man! Cursed man!" (the only words uttered in the pantomime) Don Juan attacks the miller, who collapses in a faint. Don Juan, with sparks flying from him, embraces the jolly miller’s wife and they dance about wildly together until, exhausted, they sink to the floor.

This concludes the entertainments for the day and the convicts and guests quickly disperse. Janáček has said that he was first attracted by the idea of making an opera out of Dostoevsky’s book by the dramatic possibilities of "a play within a play" (of which there are many precedents, notably in modern opera literature in I Pagliacci) and the great potential contrasts between the grim reality of prison life and the comic pantomimes clumsily acted by the prisoners.

It is getting dark as Petrovič and Aljeja sit down and drink tea. A young convict has cornered a peasant woman with a terrible pock-marked face.

"Well, where have you been so long?" he asks her.

"I haven’t been longer than a magpie on a pole", the girl answers gaily.

"I haven’t seen you for ages either. You seem to have got thinner."

"Maybe. I used to be ever so fat, but now one would think I lived on needles."

"Always being with soldiers, eh?"

"Though I am thin as any rake, the soldier boys I’ll ne’er forsake."

"You chuck them and love us: we’ve got cash too." And off they go into the dark together.

I have quoted the entire conversation of this little scene for it is the only occasion-from the beginning to the end of the opera-that a soprano voice is heard. It is true that the composer indicated that the part of the boy, Aljeja, should be sung by a mezzo-soprano: in most performances, however, it is sung by a light tenor voice. From inside the barracks we hear the "Aj, Aj, Aj" sounds of the convicts.

The convict named Šapkin is described as a quiet and sensible fellow who always spoke with a sort of concealed humour, which gave a very comical effect to some of his stories. In the third act he will tell us a droll story against himself of how it came about that he had such very long prominent ears. At this moment he turns to an old convict who is munching a piece of bread with his toothless gums, saying, "A good breakfast, old man Antonič", and he sits down beside him.

"Well, good-morning if you mean it", replies the other grumpily without looking up.

"I thought you were dead, Antonič, I really did."

"No, you may die first, I will come later."

Off-stage we hear Luka singing the first verse of "The Lament of the Young Cossack".

The aggressive little convict seems excessively annoyed at the gentlemanly Petrovič and the handsome, open-hearted Aljeja drinking tea quietly together. Luka joins him and together they taunt the two "gentlemen ". Dostoevsky explains that the majority of the prisoners had been serfs, tramps or soldiers and that they bitterly resented the presence in the camp of prisoners from the privileged classes.

Some convicts growl under their breath that here in prison all are equal. Petrovič politely invites the two critics to join them in their tea-drinking but this suggestion seems to incense the fat little convict even more. He barges up to the two friends asking them spitefully how it is that they can afford to buy the tea they are drinking: perhaps it is because they are "gentlemen" and made of money. He lifts a bucket in both hands and, while intending to throw it at Petrovič, hits Aljeja instead who collapses badly injured. Petrovič is appalled: the prisoners angrily turn on the little convict calling him a murderer. The guards push the convicts back into the barracks. One might be forgiven for wondering why it is that Luka and the nasty little convict should take umbrage at Petrovič and Aljeja quietly drinking tea together when less than half-an-hour earlier tea was being served to anyone who wished it during the holiday celebrations. In the minds of these convicts, drinking tea means being able to afford such an expensive luxury and hence tea is to them a symbol of wealth.

Avrahm Yarmolinsky (Dostoievsky: A Life, p. 111.) gives the following account of an earlier incident in Dostoevsky’s own prison life:

The two of them were sitting quietly over their cups of tea when a convict, a slouching hulk of a man, furious with drink, lumbered into the mess-room. At once the giant-Gazin by name-began taunting the two tea drinkers for whom prison fare was not good enough. Dostoevsky and his companion (Durov) thought best to ignore the bully and this enraged him further. He snatched up the first weapon that came to hand-a huge, heavy tray-the rest did not move a finger to defend the newcomers. For a breathless second it seemed that the two of them would have their heads bashed in. A sudden shout from the passage, "Gazin-your vodka’s stolen", diverted his attention at the crucial instant and saved them.

As we see, Janáček has used this incident in his opera, only the assault is allowed to happen. Throughout the novel there are many instances of prisoners quarrelling with one another. Rarely, however, do enemies fight and for a very obvious reason: the matter is reported to the Commandant, investigation follows, punishment is ladled out and everyone has to suffer for it.

Dostoevsky’s Novel-its Relation to the Opera: Act II

Aljeja’s friendship with Petroviček is one of the most beautiful episodes in the entire book, and the character of Aljeja himself is drawn with extraordinary delicacy and sympathy. Aljeja was the youngest of five brothers. "His smile was so confiding, so childishly trusting, his big black eyes were so soft, so caressing, that I always found a particular pleasure in looking at him, ever a consolation in my misery and depression", writes Petroviček in his alleged memoirs.

The reader may be curious to know how it came about that this simple-hearted youth could land among this den of thieves, thugs and cut-throats. It appeared that one of his elder brothers ordered him to take his sabre, mount horse, and go with them on some expedition. With the respect that a younger brother owes to an elder brother, Aljeja did not dream of asking what the expedition was or where they were going. It soon became evident that the elder brothers intended to rob and, if necessary, kill a rich merchant. And so it happened. All six brothers were caught, tried and sentenced to penal servitude in Siberia. Aljeja, being the youngest, received a shorter sentence. His touching story may be read in pages 56-60 of the novel.

As with the episode of the eagle, Janáček also presents this story in two stages: (a) a vicious attack on Aljeja at the end of Act II leads, naturally, to his hospitalization and to (b) the conversation between the wounded boy and his sympathetic friend about Jesus and his miracles. Readers of the novel will remember that Petroviček spent a considerable part of his imprisonment is the relatively congenial surroundings of the prison hospital.

The story of Lujza and the German watch-repairer is told on pp. 114-19, only the reciter is not Skuratov but one Bakluškin, described as one of the liveliest and most charming of the convicts. Like Skuratov, he is always in high spirits, good-natured and classed as a self-appointed entertainer, full of fire and life. In his initial plan for the opera Bakluškin was to be a lyric-tenor and it was only while writing the opera that Janáček thought of combining the two characters into a single person. They had much in common for they were both merry fellows who did their best to keep up the morale of the other prisoners. It is true that while the convicts neither despise nor detest Bakluškin for this, Skuratov overplays his act so much that they think of him as a foolish and useless person. His shrill crazy voice screaming out "La, la, la" and his wild outbursts of dancing get on the nerves of the other convicts who, at heart, are a very conservative lot of men. But this is a subtlety Janáček could afford to ignore.

Janáček has somewhat abbreviated the story of Bakluškin (Skuratov) and his love for the little German laundress, omitting altogether the events which immediately follow his shooting of the sausage-eating watch-repairer. He is not immediately arrested, as Lujza’s aunt is so frightened that at first she tells no one of the incident. Lujza searches out her soldier lover, throws herself on his neck crying that it is all her fault for listening to her aunt, that she truly loves him and will follow him anywhere. It is all the same in the end, of course, but the touching reunion of the lovers and their wishful hopes for a life together remind one of a similar mirage of hope and happiness just before Cavaradossi cheerfully faces the firing-squad in Puccini’s Tosca. The drunken convict who keeps interrupting the narrative with his cries of: "He keeps telling lies! Not a word of truth in it. It is all a lie! "is taken from quite a different part of the book, Chapter 10, pp. 132-3.

The Theatricals occur at Christmas and Dostoevsky gives details of the orchestra the convicts assembled for the performances: 2 violins which scraped and screeched, 2 home-made balalaikas which were wonderful, 2 guitar-players of whom one was a splendid performer ("the gentleman who had murdered his father!"): a tambourine "instead of a double-bass" (sic), and 2 accordions which were played with dash and fire.

"Kedril", the second of the pantomimes presented, is obviously a fragment with no meaning or consistency in it. Don Juan (the master) has a touch of Faust about him for we are told that he once made a pact with the Devil and -the hour of reckoning is at hand. Kedril (the servant) is the real hero of this hilarious sketch and his fooling and buffoonery, his "taking off" of his master, makes up the entire piece. Janáček added Elvira, the clergyman’s wife and a knight to the dramatis personae, bringing it more in line with the traditional Spanish legend and its subsequent dramatic and operatic treatment by Molière, Mozart and others. The little devil who returns to pinch the clergyman’s wife is an amusing touch (Janáček’s idea) similar to the humoresque postscript at the end of Rosenkavalier, when the little blackamoor page skips in to collect Sophie’s handkerchief. It was also Janáček’s idea to make the third visitor in "The Miller’s Wife Pantomime", Don Juan, disguised as a Brahmin and allow him to triumph over the husband and make a conquest of the amorous miller’s wife. For some reason the playwrights and librettists who have worked on the Don Juan theme have made their hero out to be really a singularly unsuccessful lover, despite his vigorous assertions to the contrary.

It may seem fantastic that convicts can get drunk in prison and have access to women. The novelist assures us, however, that arrangements with women were difficult but by no means impossible and, by setting the amatory scene between a young convict and Chekunda (see pp. 30-31) during the holiday festivities when guests-including women guests-had been invited, Janáček makes this scene out to be quite plausible. Vodka and other drinks were smuggled into the prison by so-called "publicans"-prisoners without any trade who undertook this dangerous task. Needless to say, there was never any lack of customers.

The drunk convict who keeps interrupting Skuratov’s tale is only one of several theatrical devices which Janáček introduces to keep his action alive, and to give an otherwise bald narrative an as it were fourth dimension: in Sapkin’s story there is Luka’s coughing and a group of convicts who kept asking if the Chief of Police was crazy. Luka’s dying coughs become louder and more ominous in the narrative which follows-the story of Akulka’s husband, and the eager interjection of the excited Cekunov and the snoring of the convicts bring a strong conviction of reality to these scenes.

The end of Act II is very cleverly handled by Janáček the librettist: in the last five minutes of the act several short vivid scenes succeed one another with the rapidity of a film sequence. First the sixty-second dialogue between the soldier and the prostitute (amorous); then the twenty-eight-word conversation between the smart-alec convict and the toothless old soldier (humorous); then the eight-measure song about the young Cossack (pathos) which, reduced to half its length, intrudes into the grim final scene where the aggressive bully taunts the two friends, assaulting one of them (tragedy). There are few five-minute sequences in all opera into which so much action and contrast are packed.

The Music of Act II

Musical themes in open fifths have been used before to represent pictorial effects, perhaps the most familiar example being at the beginning of the third act of La Bohème when snow is falling. The open fifths on flutes, as prelude to the wordless song at the beginning of the second act of The House of the Dead, may suggest to some a bleak and barren landscape which becomes warmer when the high tessitura of the song is heard: an oboe adds a pastoral touch when it repeats the plaintive phrase of the voice.

No. 12

One bar later, plucking strings duplicate the voice rhythms; this immediately becomes an instrumental theme in its own right

No. 13

and together with its inverted variation

No 13A

dominates the bustling and increasingly animated toccata-like introduction until the curtain rises.

The sound of a saw and a general feeling of restless activity prepare us for the scene of convicts hammering away at the boat they are breaking up. Janáček’s theme here is the descending three-note chromatic figure (A) of No. 13 repeated over and over again presto and harmonized in major triads. The hammers clang mechanically away in time to the music.

(A) of No. 13 is transformed out of all recognition, as Petroviček and the gentle Aljeja talk of Aljeja’s mother and sister. It begins quietly on legato strings and cor anglais, in moderato tempo and compound-triple time, with the major triads of the hammer sequence changing much more slowly. Janáček, who is almost as detached and objectively orientated from the characters he portrays as is Dostoevsky, allows himself a touch of compassion (or is it desperation?) when Aljeja speaks with emotion of his mother appearing to him in a dream. When he first mentions his mother a warm expressive arpeggio phrase is heard on the horn (see [5]-4). Petroviček eases the tension by quickly changing the subject and offering to teach the youth to read and write.

No. 14

This figure also accompanies the "Hou, Hou" chorus of the convicts as they resume their noisy hammering ([6]). The falling mast is somehow understood to be the signal for the festivities to begin: the convicts lustily shout "Holiday "to a chord bristling with flats and double flats [7]. While this gay little figure is tossed about in the orchestra

No. 15

we hear the peal of many bells, about double the number used in the already extravagant bell sequence in Tosca which perhaps suggested this idea of Janáček. Jaroslav Seda calls them Easter bells, another writer says they ring from the castle. Tosca is set in Rome, a city of churches, The House of the Dead is a Siberian prison where, one would imagine, the sound of a bell would be as rare as the sound of children laughing. No matter-if it is a bit far-fetched in the context of a verismo drama, we accept this (and other stagey or contrived effects such as the choral snoring of the prisoners, the organized laughing chorus and the unison beating of the hammers) because it provides contrast and colour in a stage piece which could be so easily monotonous and repetitive.

While the orchestra plays a grotesque march [9] with one of the longest tunes in the opera-four bars-Commandant, guests and guards arrive. A solemn peal of bells-the score calls for bells of twenty-five different pitches- "Greetings on this holiday" is the nearest to a blessing Janáček, who was a militant atheist to the day of his death, will allow his Priest. Music of hilarious gaiety follows (p. 70) (a jumpy three-note figure repeated ad infinitum): the Priest and Commandant leave as the orchestra plays the middle part of the processional March [11]. The three note figure continues to repeat itself while a military drum executes a long roll: great excitement: the same motif with the middle note of double value and phrased differently is heard at the introduction to Skuratov’s narrative [12]. The Skuratov themes in Act I, later reappearing in Act III, are not used at all in his Act II narrative. It is possible that the Skuratov dual motif (No. 9) referred to is associated in Janáček’s mind with the convict Skuratov as we see him -slightly mad-in his present wretched condition: and the new themes in the narrative are to be understood as being associated with the innocent young soldier and his tragic love affair. It is much more probable, however, that the music he composed for the narrative covers Bakluškin’s story: after which he decided to combine the two characters, liquidate Bakluškin and attribute the latter’s narrative to Skuratov. Bakluškin’s (Skuratov’s) theme is a single melodic thread in keeping with the simple, straightforward, honest, humble and likeable young soldier that he was. The unexpected supertonic major chord marked*

No. 16

is a charming harmonic touch. Figures A, B, C and D form themselves into appendix motifs: A at [13]+17, [14] and [17]-7: (B) and (C) at [14]-5 and (D) in many places but particularly between [17] and [18] and as ostinato bass from [17] + 6 to [18] where it persists like the ticking of a clock. The sad little melody of No 17 is always accompanied by the anxious ostinato figure in the bass denoting the young soldier’s troubled state of mind when Lujza fails to turn up.

Examples of interrelationship of themes in Sapkin’s story (see p. 72). (Universal Edition Score Act III [5] to [9].

No. 17

Figure A (in shorter notes, in imitation and in the whole tone scale) expresses his growing anxiety.

"But how could she deceive me!"

[16]-7 (return of the quiet No. 16).

"If you don’t come then I will "[16], a stronger presentation of No. 17 which becomes tender and tearful (at the Meno mosso) as Lujza sobs out, "Sasa, I have a very rich cousin who wants to marry me."

No. 18

Janáček has seized on the point that the German who wishes to marry Lujza as a comfort for his old age is by profession a watch-repairer, so the orchestra itself for a time [17] to [18] becomes a conglomeration of ticking clocks.

Skuratov and the orchestra ignore the rude shouts of the drunken convict until, at [18], the by then weeping Skuratov flings himself on the annoying interrupter. This disturbance is neatly timed: it allows the hysterical Skuratov to vent his feelings: it keeps the audience on tenterhooks, waiting to hear the continuation of the story: it is a much-needed spot of action in a monologue. The diversion is welcomed, too, by the other convicts who make the "Hou! Hou!" sounds which replace whistling in the prison. The story continues with No. 16 deceptively calm (p. 83).

A new theme-a kind of sister theme to No. 16-on high winds with thick chords on trombone and tuba appears at [20] which seems to depict the madly jealous Skuratov barely able to stifle his jealous anger. It alternates with an anger motif at [19] and [21].

NO. 19

The ominous words "In case of trouble, I also took my pistol" are powerfully declaimed on a single note. The music works up to a big climax as Skuratov rants and shouts, reliving the revengeful scene of violence which cost him his freedom and lost him his Lujza.

But the convicts have heard quite enough of Skuratov and his misery. Today is a holiday and they mean to have fun while the going is good. Clapping their hands and stamping their feet, they sing some wild snatches of "Russian" folk-dances, consisting of two sixteen-beat phrases alternating ([22] + 7 and [22] + 15) .

They are particularly excited when it is announced that the first play is about to begin.

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