"In a cluttered lawyer's office in Prague, a court case has dragged on for generations. Papers pile up, tempers fray, and then a stranger enters. She is dazzling, remote and eerily well-informed about events that happened centuries ago. Her name is Emilia Marty, and she has been alive for more than 300 years. So begins Janacek's The Makropulos Case, a work that refuses to behave like any other opera."
"Written in his final years, after The Cunning Little Vixen and before From the House of the Dead, it is both thriller and philosophical treatise, part legal mystery, part meditation on the futility of endless life. Its textures are spare, its pace taut. At moments, it glitters with sudden lyricism before retreating into a cold, almost forensic detachment. Few operas confront mortality with such directness or such peculiar beauty."
"Remarkably, this autumn marks the first time The Royal Opera has staged it. From 4 to 21 November, Katie Mitchell directs 6 performances of a new production that promises to bring the opera's riddling, unsettling power into the present day. Mitchell is one of the most distinctive directors working in opera today, celebrated for productions that treat human psychology with forensic intensity. Her Covent Garden stagings of Lucia di Lammermoor and Theodora combined bold visual language with an unflinching focus on female experience."
Janacek's The Makropulos Case follows Emilia Marty, a woman who has lived for more than 300 years and intervenes in a long-running Prague legal case. The opera blends thriller conventions with philosophical meditation on the costs and futility of endless life, combining spare textures, taut pacing, sudden lyricism and forensic detachment. The Royal Opera presents the work at Covent Garden from 4 to 21 November in a new production directed by Katie Mitchell. Mitchell situates Emilia Marty in contemporary settings that reference dating apps and LGBTQ+ relationships. Jakub Hrusa conducts, bringing instinctive command of Janacek's jagged rhythms and lyrical expansions.
Read at www.london-unattached.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]