Janacek: Prelude, From The House Of The Dead

The story of Janácek's From the House of the Dead was translated and adapted for the opera stage by the composer from a novel of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The operatic adaptation tells the story of an inmate at a Siberian prisoner who relates the story of how he murdered his wife after discovering she still loved another man. At the end of the opera, one of the prisoners dies who had been listening to the other man's story. It is only then that the storyteller discovers that he was none other than the man whom his wife had loved.