St. Louis Public Radio will conclude the 2011-2012 season of Met Opera broadcasts with Janácek’s The Makropulos Case on their HD channel, KWMU-3 beginning at 11:30 a.m. Please note earlier than usual starting time. Approximate running time 2 hours, 40 minutes, with intermissions at approximately 12:10 p.m. and 1:30 p.m.
The Met says:
Count on a tour-de-force performance from Karita Mattila in Janácek’s absorbing drama of a diva’s supernatural fight against her destiny. Czech expert Jirí Behlolávek conducts.
In a review published in the April 29, 2012, New York Times, Anthony Tommasini says:
At first I thought that Ms. Mattila was going for too much vampish glamour in the role. But slowly and subtly she brought out the diva’s emptiness and bitterness as Marty laughs at the foolish people around her who take attachments seriously. Ms. Mattila now adds this role to her other memorable portrayals of Janácek heroines over the last decade at the Met: the title roles of “Jenufa” and “Katya Kabanova.” The original Capek play is full of chatty conversation and legalistic bickering. But this seemingly unoperatic quality was exactly what drew Janácek to it. In the last period of his life Janácek (who died in 1928 at 74), fashioned his own way to write path-breaking operas. Though his harmonic language has pungently modern elements, the true modernism comes from the way the vocal lines closely imitate the rhythms and contours of the Czech words. And for whole stretches of the score the vocal lines hover in their own dramatic realm above the orchestral music, a hotbed of shifting harmonies and fractured phrases.
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