• Home
• Opera on 3
• Episodes

Page

Opera on 3

• Summary
• Episodes

Opera on 3

Save

• Music

Ad

Janácek's The Makropulos Case

Summary

Martin Handley presents a performance of Janácek's The Makropulos Case at the Royal Opera House, featuring a stellar cast led by soprano Ausrine Stundyte and conducted by Jakub Hruša. World-famous opera singer Emilia Marty has taken an elixir that has allowed her to live for more than 300 years under different aliases, always with the initials EM. However, the formula is running out and getting hold of a document in a long-running court case is her only chance of extending it, but after centuries of love affairs and disappointment, does she really want to live forever. Martin is joined in the box by Nigel Simeone to discuss Janácek's startlingly haunting and modern score. Janácek: The Makropulos Case. Ausrine Stundyte (soprano: Emilia Marty), Heather Engebretson (soprano: Krista), Sean Panikkar (tenor: Albert Gregor), Johan Reuter (bass-baritone: Baron Jaroslav Prus), Henry Waddington (bass-baritone: Dr Kolenatý), Daniel Matoušek (tenor: Janek), Alan Oke (tenor: Count Hauk-Šendorf), Peter Hoare (tenor: Vítek), Susan Bickley (mezzo: Stage door woman), Jingwen Cai (mezzo: Hotel maid), Jeremy White (bass: Security guard), Royal Opera Chorus, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Jakub Hruša (conductor)

Review

Michael Hodges

A first ever performance at Covent Garden for Janácek’s 1926 expressionist opera The Makropulos Case. Based on the Czech playwright Karel Capek’s play of the same name about an immortal soprano, it is updated here with a feminist slant in Katie Mitchell’s production.

Lithuanian soprano Ausrine Stundyte plays Emilia Marty, caught up in the century-old legal case Gregor v Prus, the outcome of which will decide if she stays immortal. How much of the meta post-modernity of all this is Janacek’s and how much Mitchell’s remains moot, but the complexity of the music is certainly down to him.

Stundyte, who sings with great power and clarity, has been lauded variously as mesmerising, imperious and magnetic.

• Share on facebook
• Share on twitter
• Share on pinterest
• Share on reddit
• Email to a friend

All episodes

• Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande

  Loading

• Wagner's Parsifal

  Loading

• Handel's Alcina

  Loading

• Donizetti's La fille du régiment

  Loading

• Bellini's I Puritani

  Loading

• Ad

• Puccini's La rondine (1921 Version)

  Loading

• Strauss's Elektra

  Loading

• Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro

  Loading

• Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles

  Loading

• Wagner's Siegfried

  Loading

• Ad

• Britten's Peter Grimes

  Loading

• Der Rosenkavalier

  Loading

• Angel's Bone

  Loading

• Gabriela Lena Frank's El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego

  Loading

• Puccini's Turandot

  Loading

• Ad

• Britten's The Turn of the Screw

  Loading

• Donizetti's La Fille du Régiment

  Loading

• Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin

  Loading

• Bellini's La Sonnambula

  Loading

• Kaija Saariaho's Innocence

  Loading

Show 20 more episodes

Ad

Ad

Ad