If someone doesn't like opera, take them to Janáček, conductor Simon Rattle said - and he's right. Each of Janáček's operas is unique, running at the speed of thought and theatrical in the best sense of the word. For example, the Makropulos Affair, with its almost detective plot, is definitely not a typical operatic subject, but in Janáček's performance, the century-old legal dispute over inheritance quickly turns into a gripping drama about the search for the meaning of human life. This time, Makropulos will present one of the best British opera ensembles at the festival – the Welsh National Opera under the leadership of its music director and Brno native, conductor Tomáš Hanus. They are not coming to Brno for the first time, in 2018 they staged a great production of Janáček's opera Z mrtvý domu, and this time they will surely prepare an extraordinary artistic experience for us.
But life has stopped in me, Jesus Christ, and cannot go on! Tired of being good, tired of being bad. The earth is weary and the sky is weary. And one knows that the soul has died in him! Janáček never lasted long without work; as soon as he finished the opera about the sly fox Bystrouška, he began to look for another subject. During the summer holidays of 1923, he therefore took F. X. Šalda's play Dítě, which had been recommended to him from many sources, and also Karel Čapek's play Vec Makropulos on vacation to the High Tatras. In the end, Šalda's play did not capture his heart, but the Makropulos Case intrigued him, and after returning from vacation he asked Karel Čapek for his consent to set it to music. The latter was initially skeptical and did not consider his conversational, very non-poetic and overly talkative playing worthy of Janáček's music. At first glance, one can only agree with Čapek - an opera set in a legal environment full of dialogues and a convoluted plot, where characters talk on the phone and where tracing family ties is almost a task for an expert in genealogy, was not a completely typical subject for an opera even at the beginning of the 20th century. But Janáček, who had already dealt with life and its endless cycle in The Adventures of the Vixen Vixen, was very interested in what the Makropulos Case hides under its legal-detective plot – the question of whether immortality can bring happiness to people, or whether human life is fulfilled by the inevitability of the end. Janáček himself later recalled: It caught me. You know, the terrible, the emotional thing of a person who will never have an end. Unfortunate. He doesn't want anything, he doesn't expect anything. There must be something to it. The third act, that's what I'm basing myself on: the descent, the precipice! That's what I felt, that's what I wanted.
Čapek finally agreed to the music, and Janáček set about editing and shortening the text of the play. He devoted the next two years to the composition, and Janáček's correspondence maps his preoccupation with and sympathy for the main character of the opera: Krasavice is 300 years old - and eternally young - but only a burnt-out feeling! Brrr! Cold as ice! But I'll make her warmer so that people can sympathize with her. I still fall in love with her. The pre-Christmas premiere in 1928 in the Brno theater aroused unprecedented interest and the theater was completely sold out! The success was huge. Janáček recalled: The cold one had an unsuspected success! The cold went through everyone's body. It is said to be my greatest work!
Patricia Částková
