The Makropulos Affair, review: an unmissable triumph for Welsh National Opera

Even in these days when Janáček’s operas have entered the repertory, The Makropulos Affair remains a relative rarity, a bizarre tale which demands a phenomenal singer at its heart. But its rarity should not put off audiences in Cardiff and on tour: indeed, this is an unmissable triumph for Welsh National Opera and its music director Tomáš Hanus, a Janáček expert who has co-edited the latest edition of the score.

Emilia Marty is an operatic star who, we gradually learn, has lived across the centuries. As the teenage Elina Makropulos back in 1585, she was subjected to an experiment to test a potion that extended her life. It worked all too well: through a succession of identities, always with the initials E.M., she emerges in the present (this production adopts the decade of its composition, the 1920s) as a world-weary survivor. In spite of the rediscovery of the recipe for the potion, she chooses extinction rather than renewal, and the recipe is burnt.

The story is based on a 1922 play by Karel Čapek; the emotionally driven direction is by Olivia Fuchs. Nicola Turner’s designs frame the intensity of the piece: the first act is all grey filing cabinets and surreal floating legal pages, as the old lawsuit of Gregor versus Prus (the case that leads to the revelations of Emilia’s past) is examined; the second act backstage at the opera is a pile of red roses, Emilia’s red hair and red dress; the third act for the hotel-room denouement is brilliant white, with endless white suitcases with the initials E.M. In each act, a clock signals the passage of time.

Emilia’s existence here is essentially a story of male exploitation, and around her are a collection of hopeless men in thrall to her, vying for her attention. Baron Prus (David Stout), his son Janek (Alexander Sprague) and Albert Gregor (Nicky Spence) are all superbly idiomatic and forceful. There is a marvellous cameo from Alan Oke as the doddery Count Hauk-Šendorf, an ancient lover.

Janáček’s spiky orchestration is so skillful and transparent, always allowing the voices to emerge in the textures, that I was beginning to have the heretical thought that singing it in English might communicate the text more clearly than the original Czech. But then Mark Le Brocq as the solicitor Vitek took to the stage to deliver an added explanatory lecture on the plot in English, and all was (fairly) clear.

This opera is entirely about Emilia, and Ángeles Blancas Gulin grasps the part with total passion: she may not sing the role as purely as some (like Elisabeth Söderström on the Charles Mackerras recording) but it is vividly drawn, with a touch of Glenn Close in her operatic persona. The lesson of Fuchs’s production is clearly that we interfere with the course of nature, the rhythm of life and death, at our peril: in her final desperate moments, her head shaven, the accumulated tragedy of the many lives Emilia has led is overwhelming.

Until Wednesday Sep 28 then touring until Dec 2. Tickets: wno.org.uk