The Makropulos Affair (opera)
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| Operas by Leoš Janáček |
|---|
Šárka (1887) |
The Makropulos Affair (or The Makropulos Case) (Czech Věc Makropulos) is a three-act opera by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček. The libretto, based on a play of the same name by Karel Čapek, was written by the composer between 1923 and 1925.
The Makropulos Affair was his penultimate opera and, like much of his later work, it was inspired by his infatuation with Kamila Stösslová, a married woman much younger than himself.
The world premiere of the opera was given at the National Theatre in Brno on December 18, 1926, conducted by František Neumann.
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[edit] Composition
Janáček's operatic version was written between 1923 and 1925. He had seen the play early in its run in Prague on 12 December 1922, and immediately saw its potential. He entered into a correspondence with Čapek, who was accommodating towards the idea, although legal problems in securing the rights to the play delayed work. When these problems were cleared on 10 September 1923, Janáček began work on the opera straight away. He wrote the libretto himself, and by December 1924 had completed the first draft of the work. He spent another year refining the score, before completing it on 3 December 1925.
Musically, much of the piece has little in the way of thematic development, instead presenting the listener with a mass of different motifs and ideas. Janáček's writings indicate that this was a deliberate ploy to give musical embodiment to the disruptive, unsettling main character Emilia Marty/Elina Makropulos. Only at the end of the final act, when Makropulos' vulnerability is revealed, does the music tap into and develop the rich lyrical vein that has driven the music throughout.
It is often argued that Emilia Marty, like the other female heroes in Janáček's later operas, stands for one of the aspects of Kamila Stösslová, the woman with whom he was in love for the last decade of his life. Marty, with a clever and manipulative exterior hiding a core of vulnerability, is a 'snapshot' of Stösslová, like the coquettish and shy Cunning Little Vixen and the tragic Káťa Kabanová.
[edit] Performance history
Two years after its premiere, the opera was given in Prague, and also in Germany in 1929, but it did not become really popular until a production by the Sadler's Wells company in London in 1964. While performed with some regularity, it has not become part of the core opera repertory in the same way as have Jenůfa, Káťa Kabanová or The Cunning Little Vixen.
[edit] Roles
| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast, December 18, 1926 (Conductor: František Neumann) |
|---|---|---|
| Emilia Marty, formerly Elina Makropulos, a celebrated singer | soprano | Alexandra Čvanová |
| Albert Gregor | tenor | Emil Olšovsky |
| Dr Kolenatý, a lawyer | bass-baritone | Ferdinand Pour |
| Vítek, Kolenatý's clerk | tenor | Valentin Šindler |
| Kristina, his daughter, a young singer | soprano | Jožka Mattesová |
| Baron Jaroslav Prus | baritone | Zdeněk Otava |
| Janek, his son | tenor | |
| Count Hauk-Šendorf | tenor | Václav Šindler |
| a Stage Technician | baritone | |
| a Cleaning Woman | alto | Mrs Ježićová |
| a Maid | alto | |
| Offstage male chorus | ||
[edit] Synopsis
Background: The opera is based on the protagonist's search for a secret alchemic formula. As will be explained in the Third Act, the potion is able to extend one's lifetime by about 300 years. Emilia Marty, singer at the Vienna Opera, already used it: in 1922, when the opera is set, she is 337 years old. Over three centuries she assumed many identities, e.g. Eugenia Montez, Ekaterina Myshkin and Elian McGregor, in order to hide her exceptional age. Originally her name was Elina Makropulos, daughter of the alchemist Hieronymus, who lived in Prague at the end of the XVI century at the court of Emperor Rudolf II. Rudolf gave Hieronymus the task to prepare a potion that would extend his life by three centuries and ordered him to test it on Elina. She fell into a coma and Hieronymus was sent to prison. But after a week Elina woke up and fled with the formula, starting a new, itinerant life.
She traveled around the world and became one of the best singers of all time. Unfortunately her secret prevented her from feeling real love for anybody: she had to leave too many husbands, sons, and lovers.
Finally Emilia-Elina returns to Prague, where she hears that the wealthy Prus and middle-class Gregor families have been fighting a lawsuit for almost a century. Albert Gregor claims that his ancestor Ferdinand inherited some of the baron Joseph Ferdinand Prus' fortune at his death in 1827, while the Prus family denies such a legacy. Elina, who also had been Elian McGregor, mother of Ferdinand Gregor as well as baron Prus' lover, is able to provide Gregor and his lawyer Kolenatý with the concluding information to win the case. Ferdinand Gregor is the illegitimate child of Joseph Ferdinand Prus and Elian McGregor and a will in his favour is conserved between baron Jaroslav Prus' documents. In reality Emilia Marty is not interested in Gregor's claim. She wants to retrieve the potion's formula that she gave to her lover Joseph Ferdinand Prus and since then has been kept in the barons' archive. She desires to ensure herself another 300 years of life and youth.
[edit] Act 1
Kolenatý's law office, Prague, 1922
Before he leaves to recover an important will from Prus' manor, Kolenatý provides a detailed explanation of the case to those present which include Gregor, a party to a lawsuit between two families going back to 1827. Sudenly, Emilia Marty, who is a singer at the Vienna Opera at the time of the opera's setting, comes in and supplies additional important information, but without revealing to those present that she has received a dose of a potion three hundred years before, and that this has allowed her to live for three more centuries. During this time, she has assumed many identities, such as "Eugenia Montez", "Ekaterina Myshkin" and "Elian McGregor" all in order to hide her exceptional age. Originally her name was Elina Makropulos.
Gregor is quickly charmed and begins to fall in love right away, but he is coldly refused by a bored and indifferent Emilia. However, she tries to take advantage of the situation by asking for his help in finding certain documents, the location of which she appears to know. In the meantime Kolenatý has returned and she learns that the will is still in baron's possession.
[edit] Act 2
The empty stage of the opera house
On the day following Emilia's extraordinary performance in the leading role, she is in the wings and confronts several of her admirers including Gregor, Kristina, Vítek and Janek (the son of Jaroslav Prus) and the old (and by now senile) Count Hauk-Šendorf. The latter thinks he recognises Emilia as Eugenia Montez, a gipsy woman with whom he had an affair in Andalusia half a century before. Finally Jaroslav Prus arrives; he does not understand Emilia's interest in his family and the inexplicable role she played in Gregor's case. He puts the singer on the spot. Emilia induces the young Janek to try to embezzle a document for her and, at the same time, tries to buy the formula from Prus, who agrees to do so in exchange for one night of love.
[edit] Act 3
Emila's hotel room the next morning
Emilia and Prus have spent the night together and he gives her the envelope. However, news of Janek's suicide due to his infatuation with Emilia is announced. Despite Prus' grief, Emilia reacts with absolute indifference. Prus hardly has time to express his disdain at her reaction when Gregor, Kolenatý, and the Count Hauk arrive. Kolenatý and his client want to report Emilia for fraud because of the strange and inexplicable contradictions in her story. Emilia at last decides to tell the truth: over three hundred years, she has been Elian, Elina and many others. As the effects of the potion wear off and the first signs of old age appear on her face, they finally believe her. Emilia decides not to drink it for a second time and will allow herself die naturally, realizing that perpetual youth leaves nothing but pain and apathy. She gives Kristina the precious document, while Emilia finally dies as the document that hides 'the Makropulos secret' is burned.
[edit] Selected recordings
| Year | Cast: Emilia, Gregor, Kolenatý, Vitek, Kristina, Jaroslav Prus, Janek |
Conductor, Opera House and Orchestra |
Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1959 | Zdenka Hrncirova, Beno Blachut, Rudolf Asmus, ??, Milada Musilová, Theodor Srubar, Rudolf Vonásek |
Jaroslav Vogel, Prague National Theatre Chorus and Orchestra |
LP: Suprahon |
| 1966 | Libuse Prylova, Ivo Zidek, Karel Berman, Rudolf Vonasek, Helena Tattermuschová, Premysl Kocí, Viktor Koci |
Bohumil Grégor, Prague National Theatre Chorus and Orchestra |
LP and Audio CD: Supraphon |
| 1971 | Marie Collier, Gregory Dempsey, Eric Shilling, Francis Egerton, Barbara Walker, Raimund Herincx, David Hillman |
Charles Mackerras, Sadler's Wells Opera Chorus and Orchestra |
Audio CD: Oriel Music Society (Performed in English) |
| 1976 | Anja Silja, William Lewis, Joshua Hecht Raymond Manton, Pamela South, Geraint Evans, Neil Rosenheim |
Christoph von Dohnányi, San Francisco Opera Chorus and Orchestra |
Live broadcast and Audio CD: (Performed in English). |
| 1978 | Elisabeth Söderström, Peter Dvorsky, Dalibor Jedlicka, Vladimir Krejcík, Anna Czakova, Václav Vitek, Zdenek Svehla |
Charles Mackerras, Wiener Staatsopernchor, Wiener Philharmoniker |
LP and Audio CD: |
| 1989 | Stephanie Sundine, Graham Clark, Robert Orth, Richard Margison, Kathleen Brett, Cornelius Opthof Benoit Boutet |
David Robertson, Canadian Opera Company Lotfi Mansouri (stage director) |
VHS Video: Pickwick Video |
| 1995 | Anja Silja, Kim Begley, Andrew Shore, Anthony Roden, Manuela Kriscak, Victor Braun, Christopher Ventris, |
Andrew Davis, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Glyndebourne Festival Nikolaus Lehnhoff (stage director) |
VHS & DVD: Warner Music Vision |
| 1996 | Jessye Norman, Graham Clark, Donald McIntyre, Ronald Naldi, Marie Plette, Håkan Hagegård, William Burden |
David Robertson, Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra |
Audio CD: Oriel Music Society (Performed in English) |
[edit] References in Literature
The Makropulos case forms the center of a classic article by Bernard Williams, in which he argues that a person never has reason to live an immortal life.[1]
[edit] Sources
- John Tyrrell, Janáček's Operas, A Documentary Account, Faber and Faber, 1992, ISBN 0-571-15129-9, Ch. 8 (p. 304-325).
- Programme for English National Opera's performances of The Makropoulos Affair, May 2006.
- Holden, Amanda; (editor), with Kenyon, Nicholas and Walsh, Stephen [1993]. The Viking Opera Guide. London: Viking. ISBN 0-670-81292-7.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Bernard Williams, "The Makropulos case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality", Problems of the Self, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.
