The opera  From the House of the Dead, Janáček’s last work for the stage, is still impressive today with its profound, genuine humanism. Based on Dostoyevsky’s novel Notes from the House of the Dead, Janáček describes the fate of a group of prisoners in a Russian jail, where freedom is fettered and human dignity is tarnished and disgraced. “And the blackness of my opera is giving me lots of work. It seems to me as though by degrees I am crawling lower and lower to the depths of humanity with its most wretched people. And it is difficult to crawl,” wrote Janáček in a letter to his friend Kamila Stösslová. Like a film on the big screen the opera plays out in front of the audience, where the confessions of the prisoners alternate with moments from everyday prison life, part of which includes brawling, drunkeness, pompous bragging and silence, as well as rare moments of joy. Even the souls of the prisoners contain glimmers of humanity – “In every creature a spark of God,” as the composer noted on the title page of the opera score. Janáček worked on the score from the start of 1927. However, he never managed to complete the score definitively as his work came to an end in August 1928 with his sudden death.