Only someone who’s lived for centuries could possibly know how to find long-hidden evidence to help settle a protracted legal dispute over an inheritance. In Janáček’s penultimate opera, the singer Emilia Marty has lived for 337 years, originally named Elina Makropulos and assuming different identities over the many decades, though using the same initials. But tied up in her interest in the case of Gregor v Prus is Marty’s desperate quest to find again the secret formula for the elixir that granted her immortality. As the young daughter of Hieronymus Makropulos – physician to the Holy Roman Emperoror Rudolf II who ordered Makropulos to find a means of extending his life – Elina was the hapless guinea pig.
Placing it in the 1920s when the opera was written, and befitting a story whose heroine aspires to being the greatest operatic performer ever, Olivia Fuchs’ new production for Welsh National Opera has a suitably overblown and flamboyant air. It’s also all of a piece with the often tumultuous feel and fast-flowing current of Janáček’s music, thrillingly delivered here by the orchestra of WNO under its music director, Tomáš Hanus. Co-editor of the new edition of the score being used, Hanus’ affinity with Janáček was always evident, ravishing details emerging.
