Entry tags:
The Makropulos Case.
Vec Makropulos | The Makropulos Case. Opera by Leos Janácek, performed by the San Francisco Opera.
I really like opera, as an art form, but for various reasons my tastes in performance tend to run towards the 20thC, the contemporary, and things I haven't seen/have never played, which tends to bias me against most of the staple repertoire. Though I've played some Janácek, I'd never seen any of his operas, and I jumped at the chance to see this with two of my friends who are both big bel canto fans. It was nice seeing an opera with people who know more about its current scene than I do.
The other thing that I was bowled over by was how much I actually liked this opera. Normally I go and I enjoy the experience because I like opera, not because I love that opera in particular (the exception here being Tosca; I love Tosca, but even that I came by more intellectually than passionately). This opera, on the other hand, I was swept away by, even from the cheap seats way up in the rafters (the War Memorial Opera House lives up to its name; it feels like a mausoleum inside, but even the cheap seats have decent, if vertiginous, views).
It's no mystery to me why I liked it so much, either; the music is great, of course, but it's the story, and how the female character lives and dies (i.e. with agency), that really hit me. To wit, the opera takes place in Prague in the Roaring Twenties; on the day that the final judgment in a generations-old inheritance suit is about to be handed down, the famous opera singer Emilia Marty turns up in the lawyer Kolenaty's office, claiming both to have and to need crucial information in the case. It transpires that Emilia is the daughter of the court physician to Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, and that she gave the recipe for the philosopher's stone to her lover Baron Prus nearly a century ago; she needs to get the document back from Prus's heir, who is embroiled in a suit with Albert Gregor, the descendant of Emilia's illegitimate son by Prus. Particularly as played by Karita Mattila, Emilia is a titanic, entrancing figure who steamrolls over and enthralls everyone she meets, but the twentieth century and modernity (brilliantly symbolized by the giant illuminated clock keeping real time in the set) are wearing her out, and at the end she decides of her own volition not to take the stone again, but to die, and gives the recipe for the stone to the chorus singer Kristina, whose fiancé has killed himself for love of Emilia--and Kristina, of her own choice, burns it.
Or at least, she burns it in the libretto, but in this production, Kristina's father snatches it out of her hands and the men gathered around Emilia's deathbed light it on fire themselves, which for me was the one wrong note in this production (the sets and the performances are great). My friends L and W and I had a discussion about it on the way back to the BART, and L proposed it as a directorial fillip commenting on the fact that in the 1920s women's social agency was nowhere as great as it was thought to be, especially compared to now--in the program it specifically mentions Kristina burning the recipe, which suggests that Olivier Tambosi, the director, added it after the program went to press. Rationally I suppose I can buy that, but I don't find it emotionally satisfying at all. Regardless, this was a fantastic opera with a stellar production.
I really like opera, as an art form, but for various reasons my tastes in performance tend to run towards the 20thC, the contemporary, and things I haven't seen/have never played, which tends to bias me against most of the staple repertoire. Though I've played some Janácek, I'd never seen any of his operas, and I jumped at the chance to see this with two of my friends who are both big bel canto fans. It was nice seeing an opera with people who know more about its current scene than I do.
The other thing that I was bowled over by was how much I actually liked this opera. Normally I go and I enjoy the experience because I like opera, not because I love that opera in particular (the exception here being Tosca; I love Tosca, but even that I came by more intellectually than passionately). This opera, on the other hand, I was swept away by, even from the cheap seats way up in the rafters (the War Memorial Opera House lives up to its name; it feels like a mausoleum inside, but even the cheap seats have decent, if vertiginous, views).
It's no mystery to me why I liked it so much, either; the music is great, of course, but it's the story, and how the female character lives and dies (i.e. with agency), that really hit me. To wit, the opera takes place in Prague in the Roaring Twenties; on the day that the final judgment in a generations-old inheritance suit is about to be handed down, the famous opera singer Emilia Marty turns up in the lawyer Kolenaty's office, claiming both to have and to need crucial information in the case. It transpires that Emilia is the daughter of the court physician to Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, and that she gave the recipe for the philosopher's stone to her lover Baron Prus nearly a century ago; she needs to get the document back from Prus's heir, who is embroiled in a suit with Albert Gregor, the descendant of Emilia's illegitimate son by Prus. Particularly as played by Karita Mattila, Emilia is a titanic, entrancing figure who steamrolls over and enthralls everyone she meets, but the twentieth century and modernity (brilliantly symbolized by the giant illuminated clock keeping real time in the set) are wearing her out, and at the end she decides of her own volition not to take the stone again, but to die, and gives the recipe for the stone to the chorus singer Kristina, whose fiancé has killed himself for love of Emilia--and Kristina, of her own choice, burns it.
Or at least, she burns it in the libretto, but in this production, Kristina's father snatches it out of her hands and the men gathered around Emilia's deathbed light it on fire themselves, which for me was the one wrong note in this production (the sets and the performances are great). My friends L and W and I had a discussion about it on the way back to the BART, and L proposed it as a directorial fillip commenting on the fact that in the 1920s women's social agency was nowhere as great as it was thought to be, especially compared to now--in the program it specifically mentions Kristina burning the recipe, which suggests that Olivier Tambosi, the director, added it after the program went to press. Rationally I suppose I can buy that, but I don't find it emotionally satisfying at all. Regardless, this was a fantastic opera with a stellar production.
