In the world of opera, elixirs, divas and femmes fatales come and go like mushrooms after the rain. Janáček’s The Makropulos Case scores a hat-trick with an opera singer who has seduced and dispensed with admirers for over 300 years (400 in this updated production) after being administered a life-renewing potion by her father, the Emperor’s physician.
Katie Mitchell, who last week announced she was retiring from opera production on the grounds of its endemic misogyny – her accusation was levelled at the theatrical industry, but can perhaps be read, more broadly, as a condemnation of stereotypically sexist operatic plots. For her own finale to the operatic world, she has chosen to reimagine, along with the writer Lucy Wadham, The Makropulos Case along explicitly feminist lines, the better to answer the question that has long bugged her: why would the central character Emilia “hand this powerful gift to a relative stranger”?
