At last, the works of the great Moravian composer Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) are beginning to find their way into America’s opera houses. In Europe, the efforts of Australian conductor Sir Charles Mackerras (who has devoted his career to the faithful rendering and editing of Janáček’s often problematic scores) have, over the past three decades, brought considerable attention to  Janáček’s work. Especially in England, where Mackerras was long the music director of the National Opera, Janáček’s Jenufa and Kát’a Kabanova have become staples of the repertoire. This winter will see Kát’a Kabanova in a rare New York production at the Metropolitan Opera, and under Mackerras’s direction. Lucky thing, too, for even with the availability of Mackerras’s excellent recordings with the Vienna Philharmonic, Janáček’s work remains little known to American opera-goers, and his remarkable musical language seems hardly to have penetrated the American sensibility.

It has not, most certainly, penetrated the sensibility of Christopher Keene, the new general director of the New York City Opera. Or so one may conclude from his lame interpretation of Janáček’s final masterpiece, From the House of the Dead(1928), which received its American premiere at the New York State Theater on August 28. Janáček’s melodic eloquence and rhapsodic forward propulsion, when realized through a conductor alive to these musical qualities, can have a profound effect upon an audience. Janáček was not one to eschew the passions, either in subject matter or composition; on the contrary, his operas tend to whip