The director Katie Mitchell recently announced that after nearly 30 years she was stepping back from opera. With this staging of Leoš Janáček’s The Makropulos Case – remarkably, a first for the Royal Opera – she’s going out with a bang.
A reason Mitchell gave for her decision was misogyny, in both the business of opera and its material. She has addressed the second before here in Covent Garden productions, tweaking the stories of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Handel’s Theodora to give their heroines agency. You might think that’s not something that Elina Makropulos needs: after all, Janáček’s heroine has been alive since 1585, reinventing herself in every generation – always as an opera star, always with the initials EM – so she’s seen everything, and isn’t afraid of anyone. Yet Mitchell is still able to reinvigorate her story – this time with both her expected merciless exposure of male bad behaviour and unexpected humour. It feels as if she is sticking up a middle finger at her naysayers and her reputation for onstage gloom. Who knew a Katie Mitchell production could be this funny?
As the orchestra tears into the overture, a huge smartphone screen appears above the set: here is Emilia Marty, her current pseudonym, in her hotel room on a dating app. She swipes right on Krista, who is “looking for something casual”, but who will a few hours later have committed murder and acquired a formula for the elixir of life. It’s Krista who is the fulcrum of Mitchell’s reinterpretation: she and her boyfriend Janek have turned thieves and Marty is the mark. Vicki Mortimer’s set creates first a chic present-day hotel, then a utilitarian backstage area, both with mirror frames through which we see the characters in moments of, literally, self-reflection.
As so often in Mitchell’s productions, there are at least two scenes happening at once in neighbouring rooms – three if you count the phone screen – and it’s perhaps too easy to lose track of crucial details when there’s so much of interest going on. Sometimes, one feels the lack of stillness – and Marty’s final monologue happens in a section of the stage surely barely visible to a chunk of the audience – but the drama is convincingly acted and very well sung by a strong cast, including Heather Engebretson as Krista, Johan Reuter as overbearing Jaroslav Prus, Sean Panikkar as Gregor and Alan Oke as Hauk-Šendorf, whose reunion with his long-lost love is genuinely touching.
At the centre of it all is a magnificent, magnetic performance from Ausrine Stundyte as Emilia Marty, imperious yet not invulnerable. Her voice soars above the orchestra even as Jakub Hrůša’s conducting draws out the deep contrasts and bright colours of Janáček’s score, given in an unbroken, 90-minute stretch. It’s an exhilarating evening; the opera world is going to miss Mitchell perhaps more than it realises.
• At the Royal Opera House, London, until 21 November.
