The Makropulos Affair
★★★★☆ Provocative
Festival Theatre: Thurs 27 Feb & Sat 1 March
Review by Rebecca Mahar
In a new co-production with Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera revives The Makropulos Affair at the Festival Theatre for two performances only, in a production rich with detail and sumptuous design.
This is Leoš Janáček’s penultimate opera, first staged in 2026 and adapted from Karel Čapek’s 1922 play of the same name: Věc Makrolupos in Czech. It centres around a renowned opera singer, known as Emilia Marty, who arrives at the law office of one Doctor Kolenatý.
Ryan Capozzo (Albert Gregor) and Orla Boylan (Emilia Marty) in The Makropulos Affair. Pic: Mihaela Bodlovic.
Emilia is there to inquire after the Gregor case, an inheritance dispute which has dragged out for generations and of which she has a seemingly impossible knowledge.
The current heir, Albert Gregor, falls madly in love with her after she reveals the identity of his great-great-grandmother, Ellian MacGregor, from whom his surname derives, and where the will of his great-great-grandfather “Pepi” Prus might be found, which would decide the inheritance in his favour against the current Baron Jaroslav Prus.
It is immediately clear that Emelia is not who —or not only who— she says she is. There is more than coincidence in the repeated initials of E.M. between herself, Ellian MacGregor, and Eugenia Montez, for whom she is recognised by the aged and feeble-minded Count Hauk-Šendorf, identifying her as his mistress of half a century ago.
All begins to unravel when the birth register for Ferdinand Karl Gregor, the son of Ellian and Pepi, is discovered, naming Elina Makropulos as his mother.
a classic whodunit
With all the twists and turns of a classic whodunit, The Makropulos Affair nevertheless invites its audience into Emelia’s world of dramatic irony, where she knows all and her secret is not expected to remain hidden from the audience. Rather, its suspense is in how the story will unfold, and what its consequences will be.
The cast of The Makropulos Affair. Pic: Mihaela Bodlovic
Orla Boylan fills the title role with command and charm, and the tough-exteriored world-weariness of one who has lived too long. Boylan’s vocal performance is excellent, but it’s in the acting moments where Marty’s surface cracks that she really shines, delivering aching pathos in such lines as “I’m so tired, speak softly”, and “how grim to have to live so long”.
Norwegian tenor Thorbjørn Gulbrandsøy stepped in to cover the role of would-be heir Albert Gregor on the night of Æ’s visit, with committed melodrama and superb petulance. Although at times a little quiet against the orchestra, Gulbrandsøy’s all-around performance is exceptional, flinging himself from passionate love to murderous jealousy and back again with the suddenness and inanity Janáček’s opera intends to highlight.
excels
There is not a weak link in the company, which excels at the serious and the comic, with a particular flair for physical comedy throughout. Notably, Catriona Hewitson is perfectly cast as Kristina, demonstrating the young singer’s parallel arc to that of Marty with a clarity that promises Hewiston’s career will be one to watch.
Catriona Hewitson (Kristina) in The Makropulos Affair. Pic: Mihaela Bodlovic.
Technically, the production is beautiful, and beautifully unified. Designer Nicola Turner’s sets are detailed without being cluttered, lavishly edited to produce the maximum effect of establishing their world. Together with lighting design from Robbie Butler, who wields a deft dramatic hand, and video design from Sam Sharples, the world of the opera is extended beyond the realism of its setting and costume, into Emilia Marty’s expanded and unseen reality.
The only technical misstep lies in the video design, where on a few brief occasions near the beginning of the opera, bright green lines flicker and warp atop the video, bringing to mind The Matrix and diverging sharply from the otherwise desaturated, ghostly ambience of the production’s projections. Apart from this, the video design adds greatly to the atmosphere of the opera where it could easily have been intrusive, a difficult feat to achieve.
need for control
Piled-up papers rise into the air at Marty’s first entranced, ignored by those around her; when a child appears projected behind the action, only she can see it; when men and spectres from her past being to pile up, she can only laugh, and despair.
The Makropulos Affair grapples with questions of life, death, agency and autonomy, and how a woman moving through the world for centuries may find herself always facing the same men in their insecurity and need for control.
In the opera’s final moments, Elina Makropulos re-emerges to make her ultimate choice, and claim her power – as does Kristina, an alarum of cycles ending, and hope in death.
Running time: Two hours and 15 minutes (including one interval)
Festival Theatre, 13-29 Nicolson St. EH8 9FT
Thurs 27 Feb & Sat 1 March
Evenings 7:15pm
Tickets and details: Book here.
Access performances: 1 March performance will be audio described.
Orla Boylan (Emilia Marty) and Alasdair Elliott (Count Hauk-Šendorf) in The Makropulos Affair. Pic: Mihaela Bodlovic.
ENDS
