Thursday 05 February 2026 | 20:00 |
Saturday 07 February 2026 | 18:00 |
Tuesday 10 February 2026 | 20:00 |
Thursday 12 February 2026 | 20:00 |
Friday 13 February 2026 | 18:00 |
Monday 16 February 2026 | 20:00 |
Opera Ballet Vlaanderen | ||
Dennis Russell Davies | Conductor | |
Kornél Mundruczó | Director | |
Monika Pormale | Set Designer, Costume Designer | |
Felice Ross | Lighting Designer | |
Orchestre National de Lille | ||
Marcos Darbyshire | Revival Director | |
Véronique Gens | Soprano | Emilia Marty / Elina Makropoulos |
Robin Adams | Baritone | Baron Jaroslav Prus |
Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur | Mezzo-soprano | Kristina |
Jean-Paul Fouchécourt | Tenor | Count Hauk-Šendorf |
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.