Review: The Makropulos Affair – Scottish Opera

The problem with Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair lies in what it is: a play set to music, with few concessions made to the genre into which Karel Čapek’s text has been translated. The result is 2 hours of – admittedly rather chic – recitative, without the least hint of a complete melody, never mind an aria. It’s not unpleasant, but musically it simply doesn’t go anywhere. Factor in the weaknesses of the originating work, inherited without the least remedy by Janáček’s libretto, and the result is an uphill struggle for any company and cast seeking to stage the work with much success.

A Cinematic Swaddle for a Stiff Score

Bravo then to Director Olivia Fuchs for swaddling the ‘tragedy’ of the improbably long-lived Emilia Marty – played with swaggering elan by soprano Orla Boylan – in the glamour of early 20th-century cinema. This ultimately moralistic melodrama is quite at home amidst the silks and top hats of an era that just loved to watch a ‘fallen woman’ bite the dust.

The trope may be tired, but Fuchs’ production is not. Indeed it fairly fizzes along on a heady mix of nigh-grotesque comic energy and complete earnestness. Fuchs and Boylan have no interest in an apologetic anti-heroine, and so the grinning 300-something (thanks to a magic potion), swears, drinks, chain-smokes, and schemes right up until a long-delayed moment of self-reflection sees her to the grave.

“The result is 2 hours of – admittedly rather chic – recitative, without the least hint of a melody, never mind an aria.”

Performers Shine, Score Stumbles

Do these theatrical strengths make the score any more enjoyable? No. Former music director of the English National Opera, Martyn Brabbins, rouses the ever-dependable Orchestra of Scottish Opera to a fulsome, wonderfully textured performance, but there’s only so much you can do with such an aimless score. Up on stage the cast is well furnished with vocal talent, but the real challenge with The Makropulos Affair is thespian, not operatic.

**Production shots from The Makropulos Affair – click to enlarge and for details. Images © Mihaela Bodlovic**

In this respect, the line-up acquits itself well. Scottish Opera stalwarts Roland Wood and Alasdair Elliot offer a suitably odious Baron Prus and age-addled Count Hauk-Šendorf respectively. SO debutant tenors Thorbjørn Gulbrandsøy as the insufferably wet Albert Gregor and Michael Lafferty as the Baron’s idiot son Janek hit the required notes. Mark Le Brocq’s legal clerk Vítek – yet another tenor, one presumes Janáček had a low opinion of baritones – adds a little down-at-heel humour, whilst the abundantly capable Catriona Hewitson charms as his daughter; a part which does not make the most of her vocal gifts.

Staging Saves the Day

Lyricism, or the lack of aside, it is rather pleasant to spend the opera with David Pountney’s English translation which sits snuggly within the score, and with enough natural cadence to make the supertitles often surplus to requirements. The only exceptions arise when some of the more understated sung dialogue is submerged beneath the orchestra’s pomp.

“The trope may be tired, but Fuchs’ production is not. Indeed it fairly fizzes along on a heady mix of nigh-grotesque comic energy and complete earnestness.”

Turning to the staging, there’s more to praise without equivocation. Nicola Turner’s sets and costuming are ludicrously lush, whilst videographer Sam Sharples’ noir-esque projections nail the black-and-white silver screen vibe. The opera may be flawed, but one cannot criticise Fuchs for a lack of admirably realised ambition or invention. Indeed, one of the more enjoyable passages is of her own making, a cute interlude between Acts 1 and 2, which sees Hewitson and Le Brocq discover a phonograph record of the composer’s The Danube to be quite a bop.

A Grand, Grim Finale

And yet, for all this production’s technical virtues, all roads lead to a Grand Guignol finale, and however magisterial Boylan may be in a very prolonged death, it’s something of a relief when she keels over and the curtain falls. If only Janáček hadn’t been at the forefront of the often – and lamentably – songless era of contemporary opera, then at least we might have had a pretty aria to see her out. A spoonful of (tuneful) sugar might make the (hokey morality) medicine go down tra-la-la.

Featured Image: Orla Boylan (Emilia Marty) and Alasdair Elliott (Count Hauk-Šendorf) in The Makropulos Affair. Credit Mihaela Bodlovic.