Monday, November 02, 2009 6:00 PM

Legendary director Patrice Chéreau and renowned conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen join Met General Manager Peter Gelb on Monday, November 2, when he hosts a conversation in the Met auditorium. These two artists are both making highly anticipated Met debuts with the company premiere of Janacek’s From the House of the Dead, which garnered extraordinary critical and popular acclaim when it was first presented in Europe. Janacek’s final opera, From the House of the Dead is set in a Siberian prison camp and based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Dostoevsky. “It’s a work of energy, full of life, full of vitality, and that is what Janacek’s music is about,” Chereau says of the opera. “People can be scared by the idea of an opera about prison. But life in this prison is incredibly alive, incredibly strong: it’s exactly our life, reconstructed in a prison. It’s all of mankind in an opera.” The Guardian called Chéreau’s production “a momentous achievement,” and the Financial Times described it as “100 minutes of sheer perfection.”

This From the House of the Dead production panel, presented by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, takes place on Monday, November 2, at 6 pm at the Metropolitan Opera House. As a special offering by the Met and Metropolitan Opera Guild, this free lecture is open to the public. Tickets are required and will be available beginning at 3 pm on November 2 in the Met lobby. The new production of From the House of the Dead opens on November 12.

Tickets are now unavailable.