A prototypical femme fatale – emotionally impoverished, torn between restlessness and longing – cold-hearted opera diva Emilia Marty is looking for a potion that promises eternal life. Its recipe is hidden somewhere among the documents of an absurdly complex inheritance dispute that has been going on for a hundred years. The plot summary of Leoš Janáček’s opera Die Sache Makropulos (The Makropulos Affair) reads as wildly and emphatically as the sounds of his music, which are uniquely characteristic of him. Staging is by Claus Guth with musical direction by Finnegan Downie Dear. The audience at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden is literally sucked in, so dense are the melodies, storylines and profound questions of this meta-opera about the pros and cons of eternal life.
The work’s suggestive power and light footedness is supported by Etienne Pluss’ stage design and the choreography. You see a cross-section of a Wes Anderson-esque anthill in which the protagonists wander through hotel corridors, theater aisles and the shelves of a law firm while pondering the big questions of life: meaning, death and finitude, love, its absence and how it all connects. Dvořák’s friend Janáček, who worked long hours in Austria and Germany and was fluent in German, always preferred Czech in the Pan-Slavic tradition. And so his penultimate opera is also in Czech (with English and German subtitles): composed in tune with the unique harmony of the language.
Text: Hilka Dirks / Photos: Monika Rittershaus & Marcus Ebener
Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Unter den Linden 7, 10117 Berlin–Mitte; map
Die Sache Makropulos 21.01–02.02.2023. You can book tickets here. Save 20 percent on tickets with the code “Hallo2023” (maximum of four tickets per booking. Simply enter code at the end of the online booking process).
@staatsoperberlin
