Looking for a lavish, memorable night out, with drama, a wonderfully intense score, and plenty of wry laughs to escape into? We might have the perfect answer for you. Think you want to live forever? Well, we’ll see.
In Scottish Opera’s new 5 star production of The Makropulos Affair, Czech composer Leoš Janáček’s penultimate opera, Emilia Marty is a stylish, enigmatic, and weary diva with a secret: she has lived now for over three hundred years. Given an elixir of life by her father as a young girl and treated much as a guinea pig, centuries later Emilia finds the elixir begins to lose its power and the secrets of her many lives and loves come to light.
We spoke to acclaimed director Olivia Fuchs to find out more about this incredible character and what promises to be a lush and memorable production. Fuchs explains that the opera begins in some confusion – a mystery nestles at the heart of this story. What starts out as a whodunit of sorts gradually explodes into an ageless story of love, crime, and tragedy. An inheritance litigation which has dragged on for generations may suddenly reach its conclusion when the singer turns up.
In the centuries of Emilia Marty’s life, she has been many versions of herself, living different lives and moving across different countries, chasing a desire to be the greatest singer of all time. It’s safe to say she has broken many hearts along the way. Anguished that the effects of the elixir are diminishing, she seeks the document which contains the secret of potion’s magic formula – the same document as the key to the inheritance.
Fuchs says: ‘Emilia Marty is one of the most enigmatic and compelling characters written for the stage. She is the epitome of stylishness and sophistication, a femme fatale who drives most of the male characters in the opera insane with passion. This ability shines a light on the lives of others, acting like a magnifying glass – distorting and mirroring, illuminating flaws and potential alike.’
The director says she believes Janáček’s reallife muse, Kamila Stösslová, is the inspiration behind the character. More than thirty years his junior, and with no appetite to reciprocate his affections, Kamila was cold and aloof to Janáček.
Janáček seems to have projected his many fantasies of Kamila onto the character of Emilia. Like Janáček, the men of the story are driven mad by an irresistible but decidedly distant woman. Fuchs mentions that she sees the opera as chiming with many contemporary concerns, despite being set in the 1920s. These days, with so many efforts to prolong life and youth, some of which Fuchs finds horrifying – the opera asks what it means to live beyond your natural years – our heroine ceases to feel pleasure, love, pain, anything. What happens when, after so many years, continuing to live is itself beyond effort?
In fact, Fuchs’ own grandmother lived to the age of 103. She tells me her grandmother was full of energy and enthusiasm until the century milestone when, in a sense, the effort of living became hard work. So it seems perhaps there’s a personal element that’s inextricable from the philosophical.
Emotionally driven, bold and opulent in its 1920s sets in themes of black, red and white, the production is packed full of lavish detail. With an international cast heavy with talent and an energetic score, this is a production I can’t wait to allow myself to be carried away by. That it’s complete with an English translation by David Pountney will make it even more immediate and memorable. I have to admit, following my chat with Fuchs, that I’m already won over.
Theatre Royal, Glasgow, 15th, 19th & 22nd February
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 27th February & 1st March
£15 tickets for Under 26s
Main photo credit: Kirsty Anderson
Co-production with Welsh National Opera
