The Makropulos Affair review – Simon Rattle leads an exciting and thrilling half of the play | London Symphony Orchestra

IIt has only been two months since Jakub Hrscha performed Leosz Janacek’s critically acclaimed and acclaimed opera at Covent Garden. Now, like the proverbial London buses, comes the same piece again (although this time calling itself The Makropulos Affair rather than The Makropulos Case at the Royal Opera), with Simon Rattle leading two concert performances at the Barbican Hall.

Rattle’s account of the first night was simply thrilling. He plunged into almost maddening speed into Makropoulos’s thrilling, rousing Overture, and barely let up for the better part of two hours, during which the opera was played without an interval. Perhaps the intense tension sometimes came at the expense of some light touches that beguiled Harsha’s style. However, Janáček’s extremely adept ear for orchestral detail and harmony – such as the bassoon solo that announces the central character’s first appearance – is never sacrificed. The LSO played sensationally.

To succeed, this opera required a leading performance in the central role of the young alchemist Emilia Marti, originally born Elena Makropoulos in 1585. She got that from German soprano Marlies Petersen. Marty isn’t an immediately sympathetic character, but Petersen finds the emotional intelligence and vocal greatness to make her final turn in the class truly remarkable. Janacek’s writing for Marty is often harshly revealing, but Petersen rises to every challenge. It was a fitting performance to be bracketed with Marty’s most memorable.

It also helped that all the secondary characters were drawn very sharply. Having many of these roles played by native Czechs brought instant authenticity and pleasant contrasts. If Albert Gregor of Alice Brissin and Jannik of Veit Nosek stood out, then Collinati of Jan Martinek, Baron Bruce of Svatoplok Sem, and Krista of Dubravka Novotna were by no means superior. Peter Hoar Vitek was lively, while Alan Oake easily stole his scenes as the elderly Count Hauck-Schendorf.

Interestingly, this concert version of Makropulos was able to provide greater emotional impact and dramatic coherence than Katie Mitchell’s November stage production. The story of a woman who lived for 337 years, finally embracing death rather than eternal life, emerges in Rattle’s novel as Janacek certainly thought it was: a searing, humanizing repudiation of the unattainable and the tragic. A century after its premiere in Brno, a work written in the shadow of the carnage of World War I now seems eerily connected to an era in which crazed autocrats like Putin and megalomaniacs like Musk desperately yearn for a version of Macropoulos’ alchemy to achieve their immortality.