Author : Jos Hermans
All of Janáček's operas carry the traces of autobiographical elements. It is during the composition of The Makropoulos Case that Janáček realizes that his nearly 40 years younger muse, Kamila Stösslová, will never be his. Unconsciously, he allows himself to be drawn into the lifestyle of an attractive, unattainable woman. When Karel Čapek learns of Janáček's intention to turn his Věc Makropulos into an opera, he initially reacts with skepticism: "That old crank! Soon he’ll even be setting the local column in the newspaper". While the play had run successfully in the theater, it contained little dramatic action and hardly of the kind that operas are made of. The metaphysical reflections on the sense and nonsense of immortality which are at the heart of the play by the celebrated science-fiction author are conceived by the woman composer Janáček more as a personal tragedy centered around the ageless figure of Emilia Marty, who, like a ghost, defying time and surrounded by the aura of the fantastic, rushes toward her inescapable rendezvous with time.
From her father, the body physician of Rudolf II, the last Habsburg emperor, she was administered an elixir of life at the age of 16. She spent a week in a coma. Then she becomes a singer, and one of the best ever. But emotionally she dries up over time. She has seen so many lives come and go that she loses interest in people and is no longer able to love them. She retains her youth through which she continues to attract others, leaving a trail of 22 children and many broken lives. Now, after 337 years, she finally makes up her mind for herself. At the premiere in Prague (1928), Čapek had to admit : "He did it a hundred times better than I could ever have imagined."
Three spaces director Claus Guth and scenographer Etienne Pluss have in store for us: a law office in warm brown tones, an opera backstage for the second act, a hotel lobby for the third act. The fourth room is a kind of metaphysical space shrouded in white neon light where Emilia Marty retreats between acts, making tangible the terrible burden of eternal life. Then she dresses for a new role, showing her bald head as of a dying cancer patient while her heavy breathing pops through the speakers like those of the time-traveling astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssea. Thus a link to Čapek is established. An old woman and a young girl dressed as Velasquez's Infanta Margarita Teresa (costumes : Ursula Kudrna) regularly haunt the stage. They are at the extremities of Marty’s artificial horizon of life : the young girl recalls her distant youth, the old woman with the cane is her future.
Very convincing is director Claus Guth's meticulously timed acting, especially in the first act. Amid the hustle and bustle of Dr. Kolenaty's law office, Emilia Marty moves slowly and detached. The extras-dancers with which Sommer Ulrickson enhances most scenes with perfectly timed choreographies bordering on slapstick is a real bonus: clerks pluck files from the archives wall with synchronized movements; bellboys and chambermaids tumble out of the hotel elevator in acrobatic poses. Marty sternly controls the incestuous relationship with her great-grandson Albert Gregor, who wants to interpret her maternal tendencies only as sexual advances. Musically, there is so much going on that the conversational part of the play is never boring.
The second act takes us to the diva's natural habitat, into the wings of her running opera, the space that makes her admirers move like moths to the light. As an opera Guth chose Madama Butterfly, a suicidal character. Jan Ježek, the pleasantly deranged Hauk-Šendorf, finds a suitable balance between the grotesque and the vulnerable and is skillful with the castanets. The resemblance to the composer is not coincidental; Hauk and Emilia are as "out of sync" as Leoš and Kamila.
The Makropoulos Affair does not end as a utopia nor as a dystopia but in a grand Wagnerian theatrical gesture of renunciation. The impressive climax of Marty's masquerade is the final metamorphosis when, bottle of whiskey to the mouth, she realizes that time has caught up with her, that she can no longer cheat life by putting death ahead of her. Life attuned to death is easy to bear, Marty learns. After all, nature has provided it that way. She opens the window and we see her staggering toward the redeeming sunlight. That's a little thin and too predictable as a closing image to such a grandiose finale.
All the soloists seem to effortlessly sense the rhythmic requirements, the natural inflections of language and the pauses of the Sprechgesang desired by Janáček. The result therefore sounds very authentic, rhythmically and dynamically sufficiently differentiated and animated by characters with personality. Rachel Harnisch sings the Marty part flawlessly. She already did so once in Antwerp in 2016. When towards the third act the conductor lets the orchestra play louder her feather-light dramatic soprano turns out to be a bit too small after all. Nicky Spence was stunning as Albert Gregor, especially following his rather disappointing Steva (Brussels, 2014) and a more balanced Laca (London, 2021). Here he surprises with vocal power, and his passionate delivery has rare convincing moments of frustration. Bo Skovhus lends his characterful baritone to Jaroslav Prus. With Stefan Rügamer and Jan Martinik, Vitek and Dr. Kolenaty are excellently cast.
Finnegan Downie Dear was assistant to Simon Rattle, which may explain the little miracle that emerged from the orchestra pit. Musically, this was a feast. Everything was in place to satisfy the true Janáček fan: the punctuated rhythms, the chiseled motifs, the unfathomable primal music that echoes the Czech folk soul, the rich dynamic shadings, the clarity of the orchestral sound, from sparkling xylophone twitters to rasping brass, from the pounding overture with its unworldly fanfares to the magisterial finale centered around the heartbreaking viola d'amore. The wonderful Staatskapelle Berlin plays the Universal edition without specifying whether it is Charles Mackarras' version or Jiri Zahradka's more recent critical edition. Presumably the latter. This was my third visit to the renovated State Opera and I was again struck by how present the voices sound in the auditorium. Did the soloists get support from the sets or are the acoustics really that good?