Age concern

English National Opera seems, at the start of the season, to be preoccupied, as we should all be, with how long we want to live, and in what kind of condition. In Janacek’s The Makropoulos Case the eponymous heroine is able, if she wants to, to live in a state of perpetual early maturity, but after 337 years decides to call it a day. In Gounod’s Faust the eponymous hero is feeling his years, and is offered back his youth by a diabolical force in return for his soul. Neither of these works, even in brilliant productions, advances the discussion much, but neither of the productions on offer is helpful, and Christopher Alden’s, of Makropoulos, seriously deflects attention away from where it should be directed.

Makropoulos is, for all its false scents and ridiculous legal complexities, about a superficial woman whose celebrity depends on her looks and her voice. It may be unkind to mention Anja Silja, who defined the role for us just as much as Callas did with Norma, but it is unavoidable: when Silja sang it, she was a veteran herself, a legendary man-eater, and a great beauty; at Glyndebourne, where I saw her, she embodied, generated and was encased in glamour, and that is crucial to the opera. She didn’t avoid, because it shouldn’t be possible to, making us ask the question: why don’t you try doing something more worthwhile with your time?

Emilia Marty, alias EM this and that, is so dedicated an exponent of celebrity that her weariness might strike her, if she were faintly reflective, as the result of having vulgar ideals rather than of the luck of living as long as she wants. In Alden’s production this issue is not so much as glanced at, because the opera is set in pre-1989 Eastern Europe, where many people didn’t want to live even a normal lifespan.