Janáček's the Makropulos Affair

Abstract

Janáček's the Makropulos Affair John Tyrrell Leoš Janáček. Věc Makropulos = Die Sache Makropulos = The Makropulos Affair. Libretto by Leoš Janáček. Edited by Jiří Zahrádka, with performance suggestions by Sir Charles Mackerras. Vienna: Universal Edition, 2017. [Preface in Ger. and Eng., p. xi–cxxiii; characters & orchestra, p. [3–6]; score, p. 7–513; ISMN 979-0-008-08753-0; ISBN 978-3-7024-7424-9; pub. no. UE 36511. €89.95.] Only two of Janáček's operas were published in full score during his lifetime: Její pastorkyňa (Jenůfa) and Kát'a Kabanová. Z mrtvého domu (From the House of the Dead) came out two years after his death and, like Jenůfa, in an edition reorchestrated and revised by others. One of the striking achievements in recent years of Janáček's publisher, Universal Edition, has been the systematic preparation of new, scholarly editions of their Janáček stock in full score and study score, together with revised piano-vocal scores and newly-prepared orchestral parts. The "Brno version (1908)" of Jenůfa, stripping the score of Karel Kovařovic's revisions and reorchestration, appeared in 1996, and was followed by critical editions of Janáček's first opera Šárka (piano-vocal score only, 2002) and Příhody lišky Bystrou šky (The Cunning Little Vixen, 2010), both edited by Jiří Zahrádka, curator of the Janáček Archive in the Mora vian Museum Brno. Zahrádka's considerable editorial experience (he is also the editor of Glagolská mše (The Glagolitic Mass) and Osud (Fate) for Bären reiter, and most of Janáček's chamber and solo piano music (for [End Page 146] G. Henle) is well displayed in his superb edition of Věc Makropulos (The Makropulos Affair). Makropulos, Janáček's eighth and penultimate opera, was his most ambitious. The musical language moved up a notch from the easy lyricism of its predecessor, The Vixen, to be one of the composer's most gritty scores, its modernist idiom winning approving words from Theodor Adorno. Working from a ready-made text was not necessarily an advantage. Karel Čapek, the author of the successful stage play on which the opera is based, himself described it as "over-garrulous," and although Janáček by then was an experienced and fearless adapter of stage plays, it needed especially heavy cutting to turn it into a serviceable opera libretto. Putting over musically the long legal explanations in act 1 was a problem, as was the final act, where Janáček com-pressed Čapek's two scenes into one. He didn't get this right the first time, and found himself jettisoning acres of score during the revision of act 3. Conductors usually find Makropulos the most difficult of all Janáček's operas to conduct. The first act is a particular challenge, one of the longest continuous spans in a Janáček opera without the diversion of set pieces as in Jenůfa or even From the House of the Dead. Janáček nevertheless threw himself enthusiastically into composing his new opera, which he began on 11 November 1923, having signed off The Vixen on 10 October 1923. The single month that separates Makropulos from The Vixen suggests a composer full of confidence and just itching to begin, not even waiting until after his Christmas break, as in the previous operas. As he got toward the end, he began mentioning the work excitedly to his friend Kamila Stösslová. But this does not tell the whole story. There were occasions in between when he refused to discuss the opera and when, it seems, he was doing almost anything but compose Makropulos. During the composition of Kát'a Kabanová (1920–21) Janáček retired from the directorship of the Brno Conservatory, giving him much more free time for composition; he also moved over to a systematic and streamlined method of writing operas. His new routine of composing operas was based on intensive bursts, completing an act at a time, followed by a recreative break such as a trip to Prague, a stay at the Moravian spa of Luhačovice, or at...