L’Affaire Makropoulos in Paris: an incoherent production in one of the grimmest opera houses on the planet

Opéra Bastille in Paris is one of the grimmest and most unwelcoming opera houses on the planet. There are worse. There must be worse. Come to think of it, I’m stumped. We’ll need to start a competition for that. 

The circular marbled edifice on the Place Bastille, designed to keep people out rather than attract them in, is just one of President François Mitterrand’s 1980s grands projets aimed at transforming the Paris skyline. Mitterrand was a hubris-driven Hausmann wannabe.

The outside cladding is cold. The interior offers no facilities for opera goers. Tasse de café? Non, merci. The doors open only 30 minutes before curtain up, forcing snaking lines to stand in the Paris rain on the paviment. 

The auditorium is Soviet bleak. Two lines of strange, art-deco neon strip lights encase the top of the stage and stretch backwards right and left. They, distractingly, remain on during performances, catching the eye. The seats are comfortable – with decent sightlines. 

Anyway, I had not travelled to smell the coffee. I was in Paris to see Leo Janáček’s second of seven operas, the 1926 comedy L’Affaire Makropoulos, narrating the tale of a soprano, Emilia Marty, who, having been given the formula for the elixir of youth is a reassuring 337 years old. She qualified for her Phaeton Freedom Pass in 1746. Only Prague, the scene of the action, had no GLC Sir Reg Goodwin Mayor at the time, to set roaming pensioners free. Marty had to wait until 1784.

The libretto, also written by Janáček, based on a book by Karel Čapek, is tightly crafted, and written through in the style of the time with no real boundary between narrative and set piece arias. The dialogue is full of sly hints at Marty’s mysterious past from the start. Nothing is repeated. If her one-liner allusions to events of which an on the face of it 40-year-old opera star could know nothing are missed, they are gone forever. Pay attention in Seat Z 106 with no sightline!

As with Janáček’s other my-favourite operas – Jenufa and The Cunning Little Vixen – the mystical world created is engaging and the action poignant. This is what our 337-year-old opera singer – think Joyce DiDonato in 2360 – gets up to. 

ACT I 

We are in the office of a lawyer, Dr Kolenaty, Prague, 1922. Vitek, a clerk, hunting through some old files, notes that the case of Gregor v Prus, which has been revived, dates back almost a century. Albert Gregor, an interested potential heir in the case, inquires how it is going. Kolenaty has taken it to the supreme court at Gregor’s request to bring matters to a head, but has not yet returned. 

Vitek’s daughter, Krista, a young singer, runs in, babbling enthusiastically about Emilia Marty, a soprano with whom she (in a bit part) has been rehearsing at the opera. To her surprise, Marty appears at the door, shown in by Kolenaty. 

The diva knowingly inquires about the Gregor case and, learning that Albert Gregor is one of the parties, says he might as well stay. In 1827, Kolenaty explains, Baron Ferdinand Josef Prus died without will or heirs, whereupon a certain Ferdinand Gregor laid claim to his estate, saying Prus had promised it to him verbally.

Prus’s cousin contested the claim. In the first of the comedic revelations of past knowledge, Marty interrupts to say Ferdinand was really the baron’s illegitimate son by an opera singer, Ellian MacGregor. How the hell does she know that?

When Kolenaty says the current Gregor is about to lose the case for lack of evidence, Marty asks what he would need to win. ‘A will’, says Kolenaty. Marty then describes a cupboard in the Prus house where the will and other documents were kept. Kolenaty thinks she is making it up, but Gregor insists that Kolenaty investigate. 

Now fascinated with Marty, Gregor chats with her after the lawyer leaves. He tells her he has counted on the inheritance and would shoot himself if he lost the case. Though she brushes aside Gregor’s sudden infatuation, she nevertheless tries to enlist his help in getting certain documents that she feels sure will be found with the will. Kolenaty reappears, this time with his adversary, the aristocratic Jaroslav Prus. The will was found where Marty said it would be.

Prus congratulates Gregor on the victory that is about to be his – if evidence can be found that the illegitimate Ferdinand was indisputably Ferdinand Gregor. Marty mysteriously says she will provide this proof.

ACT II

On the empty stage at the opera house, a Stagehand and Cleaning Woman discuss Marty’s glamour and the success of her performance. Prus enters in search of Marty, followed by his son, Janek, and Kristina. The diva enters, contemptuous of everyone – first of the tongue-tied Janek, who immediately falls under her spell, then of Gregor, who arrives with flowers that she reminds him he cannot afford. 

Her mood softens when a feebleminded old man, Hauk-Sendorf, wanders in, babbling about Eugenia, a Gypsy he loved fifty years ago. Clue. Follow the initials EM carefully. Assuring him that Eugenia is not dead, Marty asks him, in Spanish, for a kiss, calling him by the nickname Maxi. 

When the others leave, Prus stays to question Marty about Ellian MacGregor, whose love letters he has read, and who he suspects may have been the ‘Elina Makropulos’ (keep watching those initials) specified on Ferdinand’s birth certificate as the mother. Since illegitimate children bore the mother’s name, a descendant of ‘Ferdinand Makropulos’ would have to be found, otherwise the estate would remain in Prus’ hands.

Marty offers to pay for an unopened envelope that Prus found with the other papers, but he refuses and leaves, feeling triumphant. Gregor re-enters and tells the exhausted Marty he loves her desperately. Her unflattering response is to doze off, at which he leaves. 

She wakes up to find Janek standing there and asks him, as a favour, to get her the envelope marked ‘To be handed to my son Ferdinand,’ which is in his father’s house. Prus overhears and sends Janek away. Then he agrees to give Marty the envelope if she will spend the night with him.

ACT III

The next morning, in Marty’s hotel room, Prus gives her the envelope but feels cheated by her coldness as a lover. A maid announces there is a message for Prus downstairs, then starts to fix Marty’s hair. When Prus returns, he says that Janek has just killed himself because of his hopeless infatuation with Marty. 

The diva’s unconcerned response infuriates Prus, but they are interrupted by the randy and re-invigorated Hauk-Sendorf, who thinks he and Marty are about to leave for Spain. 

She humours him, and soon Gregor appears, accompanied by Kolenaty, Kristina and a doctor who mercifully leads Hauk-Sendorf away. Kolenaty has noticed the similarity between Marty’s autograph and the writing on a document signed ‘Ellian MacGregor’. The obvious Inspector Clouseau conclusion is that Marty has committed forgery. 

Since she is uncooperative, the others search for her papers. When she pulls a revolver, Gregor knocks it from her hand. Changing her tack, Marty says she will talk to them after she gets dressed. While she is in the next room, they continue searching her effects, finding evidence of various pseudonyms, all with the initials ‘E.M.’ the penny is about to drop.

Prus confirms Elina Makropulos’ writing is identical to Ellian MacGregor’s. Marty returns with a bottle and a glass and, finally, the truth is out. She wearily confesses that she was born Elina Makropulos in Crete in 1575 – which she corrects to 1585, making her 337 years old. 

Her father, Hieronymos, was court physician to Rudolf I (who ruled in Bohemia from 1576 to 1612). Ordered by his master to develop an elixir of eternal life, the alchemist tried it on his sixteen-year-old daughter. Think Donald Trump’s early Covid remedies.

When she fell into a coma, he was imprisoned as a fraud. Shortly afterwards the girl surprisingly recovered and escaped. Some years later, she gave the formula to her lover Baron Prus. She bore Prus a son, which makes her Albert Gregor’s grandmother several times over. She sings a very funny line, “there must be thousands of my bastards roaming the earth.”

Since the formula is good for only 300 years, she now needs to recover it in order to survive. But life has lost its meaning for her. The formula is a curse, not a salvation. Marty is ready to die. At first, no-one believes her story, but little by little they realise it must be true. 

We reach the heart of the opera’s morality tale. Life should not last too long, she concludes. That way it keeps its value. She offers the formula (which was in the mysterious sealed envelope) to anyone who wants it, but no-one will touch it – except Krista, who reflects dramatically for a moment sets fire to it with a candle. 

Muttering “Pater Hemon,” the first words of the Lord’s Prayer in Greek, Marty sinks lifeless to the floor.

Observant readers will have noticed that neither King Kong nor Marilyn Monroe feature in this saga. Yet director, Krzysztof Warlikowski figured them prominently. A towering King Kong with blazing red eyes and moving forearm dominated backstage. He made the guy on New York’s Empire State building swatting biplanes look like a midget. 

Krista, the naïf singer, was cast as Ms Monroe, complete with skirt that blossomed up iconically as she stepped over air vents. Annoyingly, she headed for the air vents every couple of minutes – in case we missed the point. We even had backdrop shots of JFK. 

Why? The whole point of the opera is that youth finally rejects eternal life. Not that youth pops barbiturates and is gurneyed out of shabby bungalows under the leering public eye. Backdrop footage of the discovery and removal of Marilyn’s corpse from her Brentwood home was, well, dramatic but entirely contra the point of the opera.

Warlikowski is the director of Polish New Theatre and has turned to opera recently. His modus operandi is to inject contemporary themes into traditional works. The outcome is that this was an opera by Warlikowski, kindly accompanied by the music of Janáček. 

Frankly, he rendered the opera incoherent. Especially in the final moment when, as she is dying, Warlikowski has Marty, instead of Krista, destroy the elixir formula. The whole point of L’Affaire Makropoulos – in so far as it has a point at all – is that the young Krista generation witnesses Marty’s unhappiness and rejects the option of eternal life. Missed by the cloth-eared Warlikowski.

And what of King Kong? Not a clue. There he loomed, red eyes ultimately and presumably symbolically extinguished, his up and downsy arm having provided a platform on and off for Marty. Those interested, contact Krzysztof Warlikowski at sekretariat@nowyteatr.org.

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