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Three centuries ago, the 16-year-old Elina Makropulos is
forced to drink an elixir of eternal life, created by her own father.
Discovered by the government, she is imprisoned, but succeeds to escape
and leaves the country. To presume a normal life-style, she reinvents
herself every certain period and adopts a new name, always starting with
her initials E.M. She walks through the centuries with an enormous effect
on the men around her, and a successfull career as an Opera singer. She
leaves behind the elixir´s formula in on of her lover´s custody,
Baron Prus, with whom she also had a son. The effect of the elixir only
lasts 300 years, something that brings her now into the position to get
back the formula, if she wants to continue living. Under her current pseudonym
Emilia Marty, she contacts Dr. Kolenatýs law office, where they
handle the estate of a later Baron Prus. Suspecting the wanted paper under
the belongings of Prus, she is spinning a web of little intrigues and
uses her beauty to get what she wants. The story culminates with the discovery
of her true identity, her secret no longer remains. Confessing the truth,
Emilia tells her sad story. Feeling life rushing out of her, she suddenly
realizes, that she has lived for too long: Life has lost its meaning.
Ready to die she casts away the formula. |
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A Sympathetic Ear
One Saturday afternoon
last April the American soprano Catherine Malfitano celebrated her fiftieth
birthday at the Met as the protagonist of Leos Janácek's The Makropulos Case.
Broadcast live around the world (audio only, alas), it was a performance few
who witnessed it will ever forget. Malfitano's role -- a sort of female Dorian
Gray -- is an enigmatic, egomaniacal diva with a past. Despite her ravishing
voice and looks, she is 337 years old. But time is running out on her at last.
Without another dose of the elixir she drank three centuries ago, she will
soon have warbled her last. The opera revolves around her attempt to recapture
the formula, and her realization that immortality is no blessing -- that what
makes life worth living is the prospect of death. The Met's first attempt,
a few seasons back, starring Jessye Norman, was a disappointment on virtually
every count. But with Malfitano blazing at the center -- a harpy with a heart
of ice warming at last to the pathos of her common humanity -- even the undistinguished
production suddenly looked magnificent, and the music took fire. Impresarios
wax sanctimonious about Janácek, congratulating themselves when they put on
his operas and letting audiences know that he is good for them. But it takes
performances of genius to lift the exercise beyond the realm of the academic.
Malfitano's sympathy with his characters and their music runs deep. Three
cheers for the Met, which has asked her back to anchor this season's revival
of Káta Kabanová, an unsparing study of emotional tyranny, adultery, and suicide
on the banks of the Volga.
(The Atlantic Unbound
http://www3.theatlantic.com/ae/99jan/99jancm.htm)
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