Leoš Janáček (1854-1928)
The Makropulos Affair JW 1/10 (1925), Opera in 3 Acts
Libretto by the composer
Emilia Marty, Marie Collier (soprano); Albert Gregor, Gregory Dempsey (tenor); Doctor Kolenatý, Eric Shilling (bass-baritone); Jaroslav Prus, Raimund Herincx (baritone)
Male Chorus and Orchestra of Sadler’s Wells Opera/Sir Charles Mackerras
rec. live, 21 February 1964, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, UK
The Diary of One Who Disappeared JW 5/12
Jan, Richard Lewis (tenor); Zefka, Maureen Forrester (contralto)
3 women’s voices from the BBC Singers
Ernest Lush (piano)
rec. live from a broadcast on 3 July 1956, BBC Studios, London, UK
Reviewed from an ALAC download 96kHz/24-bit
SOMM Ariadne 5044-2 [137]

In September 1947, the 21 year old Charles Mackerras began a year long British Council scholarship in Czechoslovakia. Talk about a formative period. He studied conducting with Václav Talich, no less, began learning Czech, and discovered the music of Leoš Janáček, with which he would be associated for the rest of his career. By the end of his time in Czechoslovakia he had seen nearly all of Janáček’s operas, some more than once in different productions. He saw Talich conduct a notable Káťa Kabanová in Prague, for example, and travelled to catch performances of other operas, especially in Brno, where Janáček lived for most of his life. Five years later Mackerras was to conduct the premiere of Káťa, at Sadler’s Wells, the first of Janáček’s operas to be staged in Britain. It would be satisfying to identify that event as a catalyst for the establishment of Janáček in the British operatic repertoire, but, if it was, it was a slow-burning one. Two revivals of the production later in the 1950s failed to attract large audiences, as did the premieres of Jenůfa at Covent Garden, conducted by Rafael Kubelik in 1956, and The Cunning Little Vixen at Sadler’s Wells in 1961, under Colin Davis.

It was both courageous and far-sighted, therefore, for Mackerras to continue pressing the case for Janáček. I suppose The Makropulos Affair might have sounded slightly less outré as a proposal to the Sadler’s Wells company than The Cunning Little Vixen, but not by much. After all, when Janáček, with his typically iconoclastic eye for operatic material, approached the author Karel Čapek in 1923 for permission to adapt his play about a 337 year old woman who has mysteriously retained her youth and beauty, the latter was decidedly unenthusiastic about its chances of success as an opera. Janáček’s musical and dramatic gifts famously made it work though, and so did Mackerras’s in 1964. It was this production that, in the view of the Janáček scholar John Tyrell, marked a ‘turning point’ in audience reaction to Janáček and the widespread performances of his operas. The BBC broadcast the fourth performance of the Sadler’s Wells run on 21 February 1964, and SOMM have now issued that in remastered sound.

I’d wager that anyone who saw Mackerras conduct a Janáček opera or listened to his recordings of them made for Decca in the 1970s and 80s, will have had their interest piqued by the announcement of this release. I know mine was. I’ll admit though that I came to it expecting to find it a fascinating historical document, more of a stepping stone to that excellent Decca performance in 1978 and the notable Chandos ENO recording in 2006 rather than a notable contribution to the Janáček and Mackerras discography in its own right. In fact, it’s an astonishingly vivid and gripping performance that delivers Janáček’s vision with real dramatic punch and sensitivity. Mackerras himself is a significant factor of course. His conducting is a masterclass in pacing, and his understanding of the opera’s theatrical structure and the nervous energy which runs through it creates an irresistible momentum from the electric Prelude to its cathartic final scene.

More of a surprise to me was the singing and acting of the Australian soprano Marie Collier in the role of Emilia Marty. I’m ashamed to say that I knew of Collier from her performance as Chrysothemis in the Solti recording of Elektra but had completely failed to appreciate what an outstanding performer she obviously was – an absolute revelation here. In short, she owns the part. Her magisterial insouciance in the first two acts of the opera is simply superb, and the way she makes the transition in the third act to a wholly sympathetic being is riveting. And whilst Collier’s magnetism might make the outstanding impression, it needs to be said that the rest of the cast is also incredibly strong, especially Gregory Dempsey’s Gregor and Eric Shilling’s Doctor Kolenatý.

There are other factors which make this such a compelling experience. First, there’s a real immediacy to the performance, which gains from the relatively dry Sadler’s Wells acoustic. The live 2006 ENO Chandos performance has, as one would expect, better recorded sound, but there’s no denying the distancing effect the cavernous Coliseum bestows. Second, it’s in English. I felt that I gained much more than I lost in terms of dramatic experience, simply by being able to listen to Norman Tucker’s excellent translation (still in use in the 2006 recording), which comes over very clearly indeed, rather than having to follow a parallel Czech/English libretto. Finally, there is the orchestral playing. This undoubtedly has some rough edges, no doubt in part due to the fact that the parts were handwritten and first used for the Prague premiere in 1928, but it has an infectious vitality and real authority. After his year in Czechoslovakia. Mackerras talked about the different styles of Janáček performances he had experienced. A ‘Prague style’, typified by Talich, which emphasised lyricism and to an extent smoothed out Janáček’s orchestration to make it sound more Straussian; and a ‘Brno style’, which emphasised the sometimes deliberate coarseness of the instrumental writing, ‘warts and all’ as he put it. This performance tends more towards the latter style, and to good effect, and might come as a surprise to readers who are familiar with the Decca recording, where I think, inevitably perhaps, the Vienna Philharmonic have more of a ‘Prague’ sheen to their playing.

This performance of The Makropulos Affair feels like a significant find, but as if that weren’t enough, SOMM have also given us a very generous extra in the form of a 1956 BBC studio broadcast of Janáček’s singular song cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared. I very much enjoyed the singing of both Richard Lewis and Maureen Forrester here, even if there is a slight stiffness to their characterisation and their approach to some of the songs does not always feel entirely idiomatic. Ernest Lush’s piano playing is never less than competent, although it may occasionally lack a degree of sensitivity. The performances are again in English, and if Bernard Keeffe’s translation tends to be more staid than Norman Tucker’s for Makropulos, it’s perfectly adequate and contributes to the interest of a performance I’m glad to have heard.

An invaluable release then, enhanced by the excellent job Lani Spahr has done in the restoration of the audio for both performances. Nigel Simeone’s booklet notes are magnificent. Worth the price of admission alone, as they say.

Dominic Hartley

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Other cast
Krista, Jenny Hill (mezzo-soprano)
Vítek, Stanley Bevan (tenor)
Charwoman, Joan Davies (contralto)
Stage carpenter, Michael Maurel (bass)
Janek, John Chorley (tenor)
Hauk-Šendorf, Cragg Sinkinson (tenor)
Chambermaid, Margaret Gale (contralto)