Opera Scotland

Makropulos Affair 2025Scottish Opera

Read more about the opera Makropulos Affair

This is a fascinating opera, and it was good to see Scottish Opera tackling it again, several decades since its first production.  Like that 1981 staging (revived in 1993), this was a co-production with Welsh National Opera, and it was very well received in Cardiff. In spite of this, when one of our team caught the production on tour at Milton Keynes the audience was disturbingly small. The presentation was at least nominated for a Southbank Sky Arts Award in 2022.

The story opens in a solicitor's office, where a long-running legal case (nothing to do with the name Makropulos) is being discussed, as it drags on with no sign of a solution - almost a Dickensian feel to things.  Proceedings are interrupted by the arrival of Emilia Marty, a strange, beautiful woman, a successful opera star, rude and rather self-centred. She surprises the other characters by talking about some early, now dead, participants in the case of Gregor versus Prus as though she actually knew them.

Marty is hunting for a document, a chemical formula for an elixir of life concocted by her father, a Greek alchemist, the original Makropulos - over three hundred years previously.  The consequences lead via some darkly comic scenes to one of the most gripping of all operatic finales. Emilia, known previously by various names, all with the initials EM, starting as Elina Makropulos (and including Elian MacGregor) has to decide if she wishes to continue an increasingly empty life.

This staging by Olivia Fuchs has a largely familiar cast of excellent singing actors. It is not a long opera, so it was quite sensible to run the first two acts together. Pountney's English translation is effective and most of the singers had excellent diction, aided by the supertitles.  The Edinburgh performances had a late replacement tenor in the role of Albert. He did well, slipping easily into the excellent ensemble.

The conductor was Martyn Brabbins.  Until recently music director with ENO, Brabbins is most familiar in Scotland for his many concerts and recordings with the BBC in Glasgow.  He now made his debut with Scottish Opera and drew beautiful sounds from the band.

In view of the comment above about Milton Keynes, it was particularly pleasing to note that the theatre was crowded, as few can have been familiar with the work.  The audience enthusiasm at the end was hugely impressive, and clearly affected the performers in a very positive way.