Royal Opera House
Emilia Marty – Ausrine Stundyte
Krista – Heather Engebretson
Albert Gregor – Sean Panikkar
Baron Jaroslav Prus – Johan Reuter
Dr Kolenatý – Henry Waddington
Vítek – Peter Hoare
Count Hauk-Šendorf – Alan Oke
Janek – Daniel Matoušek
Stage Door Woman – Susan Bickley
Security Guard – Jeremy White
Hotel Maid – Jingwen Cai
Katie Mitchell (director)
Vicki Mortimer (set designs)
Sussie Juhlin-Wallén (costumes)
James Farncombe (lighting)
Sasha Balmazi-Owen (video)
Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Jakub Hrůsá (conductor)
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| Image: The Royal Opera / Camilla Greenwell |
If the Royal Opera and Ballet’s new Makropulos Case does indeed prove to be Katie Mitchell’s final opera production, we should think of it more as a culmination than a farewell. If the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at dusk, the outlines of Mitchell’s operatic work – part, to be sure, of her broader theatrical work, but a distinctive part – may now seem clearer to us all. Rightly or wrongly, for I can lay no claim to oracular status on this or any other question, they certainly do to me following this superlative evening, dramatically and musically, in the theatre, a splendid addition to the company’s Janáček series? May we hope for a Mr Brouček, even a Šárka or an Osud? Hope dies last, as the ambiguous, even oracular, saying has it.
And death lies at the heart of this work, as does life—as does their cyclical relationship both in Janáček’s work as a whole and this production, in turn both in its overt presentation and in its broader, metatheatrical, even symbolic frame. One might say the same of women, their role in society, and their role in opera, Mr Brouček’s Excursions the great exception, for even From the House of the Dead has one feel their absence. The Makropulos Case is centred, of course, around a great female singer, a great survivor, a woman seemingly infinitely blessed, but in reality, if not infinitely, then gravely cursed. She is literally the creation of men, in some ways figuratively too. I say ‘a woman’ and of course she is, but as such and as a human, she deserves to be named: Emilia Marty, Elena Makropulos, and the rest. (We may, if we wish, recall Kundry’s many names and incarnations. Wagner was not a feminist; to claim so would be anachronistic nonsense. But his works are not without feminist themes and, more to the point, opportunities—as well as themes and opportunities that are anything but. The same, of course, may be said of Janáček.) Mitchell takes a further step: this woman is queer, standing in no need of men, whatever the history with which she has been furnished (by them) may claim. She has fond memories; she has produced numerous ‘bastards’ with them, but now does not care for them (men or children).
Now forty-plus = or so she claims and
appears – EM seeks women on ‘dating’ apps. With a technological bent very much
of our time, the opera begins, app and text message communications, courtesy of
Sasha Balmazi-Owen, running parallel to, interacting with, and sometimes
undercutting the work ‘itself’. Krista and Janek intend to rob her, the former
(‘they/them’) ensnaring her prey 200 metres distant and securing an invitation
to her hotel room. The proceeds, whose net worth Janek instantly checks online
as Krista photographs them, include an eighteenth-century medallion and a rare,
early twentieth-century playbill. Yet ultimately, Krista falls for EM, mesmerised
as her male admirers, yet apparently feeling and sharing something deeper. Rather
than absconding to Berlin with her (former) lover, she shoots him: shades of Lulu,
perhaps, yet with the crucial distance that this is no blank canvas onto which
male fantasies are projected. This is women in love, by women, for women.
Surtitles are contemporary English in tone, without becoming paraphrase. Additional
communications fly across the ether: ‘Berlin or bust’, popular abbreviations,
emojis, and so on. Like anything else, use of text messages – also here
telephone calls, audio and video – can be a cliché, a gimmick, and too often
is. Here, unlike in, say, Simon Stone’s tedious, extravagant, and tediously
extravagant Médée
– If ever there were an opera crying out for the Mitchell touch… - or Kirill
Serebrennikov’s silly Marriage
of Figaro, it serves a useful dramatic purpose, both straightforwardly
and more metatheatrically in its extension of live cinema to new realms in
successful pursuit of Mitchell’s longstanding and, in this case,
unapologetically queer subversion of the male gaze both generally and in
specifically operatic guise. For when the diva comes at long last to die, she
is not so much a creature of opera, but opera itself. Has the director killed
the genre or let it die? More significantly, has it in its death, which may yet
permit of rebirth though not artificial prolongation, at last been liberated of
the male gaze. On an optimistic reading: yes, at least in part.
Janácek’s score naturally invites some degree of optimism, its increasingly rapt lyricism, orchestral themes coalescing into something greater, brought home with wondrous, golden immediacy by Jakub Hrůsá at the helm of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. That Hrůsá is the real thing no one who has heard him will doubt, but this proved a significant achievement even by his standards, as intellectually as it was emotionally involving. The same must be said of Ausrine Stundyte’s all-encompassing assumption of the title role, rightly permitting of various readings whilst ever sure of its direction. No wonder the rest of her world lay in her thrall. All contributed something to the greater whole, showing what the world of opera can and should be. I shall note Sean Panikkar’s typically ardent, lyrical Albert Gregor, Peter Hoare’s sharply characterised Vitek, Heather Engebretson’s sparky Krista, and, in another tribute, conscious or otherwise, to the best of an opera company and its progress of time, Johan Reuter ‘moving up’ from, say, Orest and Birtwistle’s Theseus to Baron Prus, and Susan Bickley from numerous Covent Garden roles (and her ENO Dido with Mitchell) to the cameo of the Stage Door Woman. It was, though, a collaborative effort, as production, conductor, work, and any future for the genre demand.
From that ENO After Dido, Purcell’s jewel forming part of a greater theatre piece, through a Salzburg Al gran sole carico d’amore I imagine I might understand better now than I did in 2009, live cinema again offering a feminist corrective or at least enhancement to Luigi Nono’s project of telling European revolutionary experience from the standpoint of female revolutionaries, the woman’s revenge of Written on Skin and queer love of Lessons in Love and Violence, the postdramatic feminism of The Blue Woman, and important reassessments such as her Aix Ariadne auf Naxos and Pelléas and Covent Garden Theodora, a path becomes traceable towards this Makropulos Case. Is it the end of the line? That should not really even be the question; it is certainly an important, musicotheatrically riveting contribution, one I am keen to see again, should I be able.
Cathérine Clément notoriously described opera as the ‘undoing of women’. Perhaps, if one is extremely selective—and one treats it only in terms of libretti. Go back to Monteverdi’s Poppea or forward to Rebecca Saunders’s recent operatic debut and it seems anything but. Nevertheless, that book or at least its title remains, whether we like it or no, part of operatic discourse. Carolyn Abbate’s review said most, perhaps all, of what need be said about it. And here, as it must, that theory is realised in practice, without in any sense jettisoning necessary critique. Actually existing opera houses and their ways are, or can be, another thing. This is not in any sense intended to refer to the Royal Opera House in particular; indeed, its relatively recent, highly publicised appointment of an intimacy coordinator marked an important step forward in one respect. I know no details of the opera-world misogyny Mitchell has endured – her recent interview lies behind a Murdoch paywall – and I do not intend to speculate. What I can say is that operatic works, historical and contemporary, and performances offer greater scope for critique and, dare I say it, redemption than the day-to-day activities of any company will. This year’s greatest musical centenary, that of Pierre Boulez, reminds us of the necessary utopianism of his celebrated 1967 interview with Der Spiegel.
New German opera houses certainly look very modern—from the outside; on the inside, they have remained extremely old-fashioned. To a theatre in which mostly repertory pieces are performed one can only with the greatest difficulty bring a modern opera—it is unthinkable. The most expensive solution would be to blow the opera houses into the air. But do you not think that that might also be the most elegant solution?
In turn, that echoes a Wagner’s diary entry from 1849.
8 May (Monday) Morning once again by roundabout route via barricades to Town Hall. At S. Anne Barricade guard shouts “Well, Mr Conductor, joy’s beautiful divine spark’s made a blaze.” (3rd perf. 9th Symphony at previous Palm Sunday concert; Opera House now burnt down. Strange feeling of comfort.
This latest death will not destroy our opera houses and companies, nor even leave them peacefully to die, but should at least ask us
whether that would be advisable. Is this, rather than opera as the undoing of
women, then, women as the undoing and possible rebirth of opera? It might, considered in utopian fashion, constitute an
act of operatic reform or revolution to be compared with the work composers
such as Wagner, conductors such as Boulez, directors such as Stefan
Herheim, and singers such as Wilhelmine
Schröder-Devrient, noting ruefully and purposefully the gender balance of
historical examples, whilst recalling Boulez’s own caution that, although
Wagner’s Bayreuth project was in almost every respect right and necessary, it
has not had the slightest effect on the day-to-day life of our benighted
operatic culture. And yet, it has, for our revolutionary-reformers continue to offer
a critique of patriarchy, of heteronormativity, and of capitalism many of us
continue to heed. To do more than criticise, we must all play our part.
