259. Vĕc Makropulos (Janáček)

(Also known as The Makropulos Case, The Makropulos Affair)

• Opera in 3 acts
• Composer: Leoš Janáček
• Libretto: Karel Čapek
• First performed: National Theatre, Brno, Czechoslovakia, 18^th December 1926

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Characters

EMILIA MARTY, formerly ELINA MAKROPULOS, a celebrated singer	Soprano	Alexandra Čvanová
ALBERT GREGOR	Tenor	Emil Olšovský
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	Antonin Pelc
COUNT HAUK-ŠENDORF	Tenor	Václav Šindler
Stage Technician	Baritone	Jaroslav Čihák
Cleaning Woman	Alto	Jelena Ježičová
Hotel Maid	Alto

Setting: Prague, 1922

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Scientists believe they could stop or even reverse ageing, ensuring eternal youth and extended life spans – an ancient dream of mankind’s. But it could be a nightmare, too, Janáček suggests.

Vĕc Makropulos (literally, The Makropulos Thing) is a meditation on mortality and meaning. An adaptation of a play by Karel Čapek (the robots and newts chap), it argues that our lives have meaning because they are finite, and calls on us to make the most of what time we have. (Čapek’s 1922 play is a possible retort to Shaw’s Back to Methuselah (1921), which advocates that long life would improve society.)

“We are happy because we know that our life isn’t long,” Janáček wrote. “So it’s necessary to make use of every moment, to use it properly. It’s all hurry in our life – and longing.”

The plot concerns a tangled court case that has gone on for a century, consuming generations – a Czech counterpart of Jarndyce & Jarndyce – and an opera singer who has secretly lived for three and a half centuries. (It is, in fact, a surprisingly Doctor Who-like story.)

“Causa Gregor-Prus. Ah, well. Nothing lasts forever! Vanity … dust and ashes,” reflects the lawyer’s clerk Vítek at the start of the opera. But the diva Emilia Marty has, or almost. That is only her latest name; she is really Elina Makropulos, daughter of Rudolf II’s court alchemist, who tried his elixir of life on his daughter, at a terrible cost. She is 337 years old, but her soul, she says at the end, has died within her.

“Oh, life should not last so long! If you only realised how easy life is for you! You are so close to everything! For you, everything makes sense! For you, everything has its value! Fools, you are so blissful for the trivial chance reason that you are going to die soon. … You believe in humanity, in greatness, in love! There’s nothing more you could wish for!”

I saw Makropulos 15 or so years ago, and I was bored. I suspect I was too young for it – ironic, given the opera is about the dangers of eternal youth. Its idiom – austere, through-composed – was too different from the bel canto and grand opéra I was used to; it seemed dry and tuneless. The story was plotty and talky: two hours of wrangling over 19^th-century legal disputes.

But a decade and a half later, I am certainly older and hopefully wiser; Makropulos is the best Janáček I have heard so far. The story is intriguing, and the score imaginative. The agitated prelude is a powerful piece of music: inexorable pounding themes, offstage fanfares (symbolising Elina’s childhood in the 17^th century), and beautiful clarinet phrases, like an expression of renunciation.

The opera can seem ‘dry’ at first or second hearing – John Tyrrell (Decca) calls it “a continuum of instrumental music with the realistically declaimed singers’ lines only loosely attached” – but there are melodic blooms: Gregor’s impassioned declarations of love for the indifferent Marty in Acts I and II, for instance, or her chilling phrase “Nic! Zhola nic!” (“Nothing! Absolutely nothing!”). The marvellous orchestration, with its combinations of brass and percussion, seems uncannily like John Barry’s Bond scores at times. The whole final scene – Marty’s death – is sublime.

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Works consulted

1. Erik Chisholm, The Operas of Leoš Janáček, Oxford & New York: Pergamon Press, 1971
2. Michael Ewans, Janáček’s Tragic Opéras, London : Faber & Faber, 1977
3. John Tyrrell, “Vĕc Makropulos“, Decca, 1978