Janacek: The Makropulos Case (The Makropulos Affair, Vec Makropulos)

“For those wanting a Czech-language performance of Janácek's opera of mortality, Mackerras's 1978 account, led by the intelligently conceived Emilia Marty of Elisabeth Söderström, and with the Vienna Philharmonic on resplendent form, retains the palm.” BBC Music Magazine, November 2009 ****

"Sir Charles Mackerras conducts with the energy of a man possessed, confirming his status as the world’s preeminent Janácek interpreter and producing a blistering performance from the ENO orchestra… It’s the humanity of Janácek’s music that finally triumphs in this magnificent, insightful production." The Guardian (review from the performance)

“Mackerras's reading, recorded in live performance, is slightly more expansive than his benchmark Vienna version… but the passionately lyrical urgency and sense of mystery drive it along just as compellingly. Cheryl Barker has the right kind of imperious soprano for Emilia Marty... This doesn't outclass Mackerras's Viennese set... But this is more vivid and dramatic, and its immediacy also offers English-speaking listeners easier access to this strange but rewarding masterpiece.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2007 ****

“This is Mackerras's second recording. The first, in 1979, in his series of groundbreaking Janácek recordings for Decca (above), had the Vienna Philharmonic in radiant form accompanied a fine cast singing in Czech. It says much for the quality of the ENO Orchestra that for this new version in English the playing is equally polished, and often outshines that of the Viennese in its extra dramatic bite.
The recording brings an advantage, too – not as plushy as the Viennese version and with extra separation and clarity in a clearly focused acoustic.
Those qualities suit the work better, which, as Sir Charles points out, is 'a different kind of music': Janácek emphatically did not want to sound like Strauss or Puccini. That extra clarity and separation means the words are astonishingly clear.
Cheryl Barker rivals Elisabeth Söderström on Decca in dramatic bite and when in Act 3 Emilia is at last given a sustained solo, Barker is even more powerful, aptly abrasive and less moulded.
Though the American Robert Brubaker cannot quite match Peter Dvorsky on Decca, it is a focused, compelling performance. In some of the smaller roles the Czech singers had an advantage but their counterparts here run them close. On any count both versions have one marvelling at the score's emotional thrust and dramatic compulsion, original in every way and one of Janácek's supreme masterpieces.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“From the House of the Dead (the 1980 Gramophone Record of the Year) was here recorded for the first time in its proper, original version; and this revealed it as even more of a masterpiece – a work, indeed, to count among the handful of masterpieces of 20th-century opera. The loss of the final chorus, a sentimental addition, is but the most striking of the clarifications: throughout, the sound is sharper, the textures are sparer, and this serves to sharpen the effect and to give the singers more clearly differentiated support. The cast is led, nominally, by Goryanchikov, but the character isn't really the hero of an opera that has no heroes, and in which all are heroes, though Dalibor Jedlicka sings him warmly and well.
The prisoners are skilfully contrasted in Janácek's writing so as to make an apparently random yet actually well-structured group; there isn't a weak performance among them.
The Makropulos Affair does have a heroine, in the tragic figure of Emilia Marty; and here Elisabeth Söderström gives one of her greatest recorded performances. She succeeds amazingly in conveying the complexity of the character, the elegance yet flinty cynicism, the aloofness yet vulnerability, the latent warmth that can flower into such rich expressive phrases and then be reined in with a sense of nervy panic. She's only really alarmed by Prus, the most formidable of the men around her, powerfully sung by Václav Zítek. Mackerras is again masterly. This is a recording to set among great performances of it.
As with From the House of the Dead, there's an essay by John Tyrrell that not only gives the listener the best possible introduction to the opera but is also a contribution to scholarship.
The fillups Mládi and the Nursery rhyme, come from David Atherton's splendid 1981 set of five LPs devoted to Janácek; the Lachian Dances set is a rather less successful companion to Makropulos.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010