Murderers, robbers and traitors live in a very small space in the Siberian prison camp that Fyodor Dostoyevsky describes in his Notes from a House of the Dead. Can there be hope, humanity or even compassion for those who are guilty in this environment? Leoš Janáček transforms the core questions of the harrowing novel into an opera and draws on snapshots from Dostoyevsky's work. In four monologues we are shown the history and mental life of individual criminals, which are conveyed all the more impressively through the music. The arrest and release of the young journalist Aleksandr Petrovič Gorjančikov, who goes through all the stages of this underworld like Dante's circles of hell, acts as a bracket.

Director David Hermann recounts the profoundly dark power and sophistication of the Czech composer's last score in a large-scale, yet greatly reduced stage design by Johannes Schütz, which allows the entire desperation of the work to be experienced.

Ian will sing the role of Morozov.