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Grand, Leeds
Only 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 sparks from the godless souls incarcerated here, though Janáček's point was that no man is entirely beyond redemption.
There's no narrative as such, rather a montage of musical confessions in which the characters relate their crimes. Strangely, notwithstanding the clarity of David Pountney's translation, there are English surtitles, while the content of the individual monologues is projected directly on to the set. Though you couldn't accuse John Fulljames's production of not providing enough to read, it only lacks the addition of a little bouncing ball following the words to complete the bizarre impression of prison-compound karaoke.
The performances have a directness that hardly requires additional annotation. Jeffery Lloyd-Roberts is supremely forceful as the far-from-gentle giant, Luka; Robert Hayward's Shishkov is a startlingly impenitent wife-murderer; only Richard Morrison's political prisoner Goryanchikov carries the wounded look of someone who doesn't deserve to be there.
Conductor Richard Farnes likens Janáček's writing to "organic vegetables – you can almost taste the earth", and the orchestra's performance is certainly full of grit. The Opera North chorus has begun to acquire the hollow-eyed look of long-term detainees, having been similarly incarcerated in Beethoven's Fidelio this season. They must be beginning to wonder what they've done to deserve such a stretch.
