I have long felt that The Makropulos Case has been unfairly neglected, but am still surprised the Royal Opera hadn’t ever put it on before. Even though I’d been to a performance in Cardiff not that long ago, I made a point of going.
Writing this up some time after the event, I don’t have that much to add to the reviews below. I found the staging rather cluttered but I wasn’t bothered by the introduction of an affair between Emilia Marty and Krista, and a plot by the latter to steal from the former, though it might have been confusing to someone less familiar with this opera. The performances were all strong, with familiar faces such as Peter Hoare (Vitek) and Jakub Hrůša for whom I once sang the Glagolitic Mass, conducting.
I’m told the surtitles were free in places and there was one misjudgement: when EM utters the Lord’s Prayer towards the end, she does so in Greek, being taken back to her youth as Elina Makropulos. However the surtitles only indicated that she was saying the Lord’s Prayer, not the change of language.
Some reviews: