The Makropulos Affair

Is a life without the limitation of death bearable? That crucial question is posed by The Makropulos Affair by Leoš Janáček. Elina Makropulos has been on earth for three hundred years thanks to an elixir of life that her father, alchemist and personal physician to Emperor Rudolf II, tested on her. Now she urgently wants to find the formula for the elixir – the 'Makropulos affair' – before the drink runs out. For all those countless years she has lived under different names with the initials 'E M'. As the opera singer Emilia Marty she turns up during the protracted legal case about the family and inheritance issue 'Gregor contra Prus'. She knows a surprising amount about the history of the bitter, warring parties... Janáček's opera thriller is a piece of cake for the Hungarian theatre and film director Kornél Mundruczó, who constantly explores the boundary between realism and transcendence. The acclaimed production he created for OBV in 2016 can be experienced again at the Opéra de Lille.