In November 2025, SOMM pays special tribute to the centenary of Sir Charles Mackerras (1925 – 2010) who was, amongst other stellar achievements, an outstanding interpreter of the music of Czech composer Leoš Janáček (1854 – 1928). At the age of 25, and over the next six decades, Mackerras introduced generations of London opera-goers to Janacek’s extraordinary masterpieces, and he was directly responsible for these works becoming established in the British operatic repertoire.
Our centenary tribute features the release of a remastered broadcast, from 1964, of Mackerras’s first London production of the opera The Makropulos Affair. Also included is Janáček’s quasi-operatic song cycle, The Diary of One who Disappeared. Audio restoration is by Lani Spahr, whose previous restorations for SOMM of works by Elgar, Bruckner, Holst, and Bliss have recently received no less than three Gramophone Editor’s Choices.
Shortly after Mackerras arrived in the UK from Australia in 1947, a British Council Scholarship enabled him to study conducting with Václav Talich at the Prague Academy of Music, during which time he discovered Czech music and Janáček in particular. His breakthrough in introducing Janáček’s unfamiliar music to British audiences came in February 1964, when he conducted The Makropulos Affair at Sadler’s Wells. This release is an exciting, highly-charged souvenir of that first London production.
The title of the opera, inspired by Karel Čapek’s 1922 play, refers to a century-old probate case, which holds the key to the formula for a life-extending elixir. The coolly enigmatic opera diva Emilia Marty shows great interest in the case, and is revealed to be Elina Makropulos, a woman from Crete, who has lived for 337 years. This recording features the Australian dramatic soprano Marie Collier, an outstanding exponent of the role. The vocal writing in the opera is predominantly conversational, underpinned by an orchestral score that is both uncompromisingly modern and evocative of ancient times.
The lead characters in two of Janáček’s operas—Káťa in Katya Kabanová and Emilia Marty in The Makropulos Affair—were inspired by Kamila Stösslová with whom he fell deeply in love, despite their both being married and he being almost forty years her senior. The earliest work to be inspired by Kamila was The Diary of One who Disappeared, begun the month after Janáček met her in 1917. This unorthodox song cycle for tenor, contralto, female voices, and piano was inspired by a diary-in-poems about a village boy who falls in love with the gipsy girl Žofka. Janáček wrote to Kamila, “All through the work I thought of you! You were my Žofka.” This 1956 recording features Bernard Keeffe’s English translation with Richard Lewis, tenor, Maureen Forrester, contralto, women from the BBC Singers, and pianist Ernest Lush.
On This Recording
Disc 1
The Makropulos Affair, JW 1/10 (Sung in English)a
Act I (36:08)
- Prelude (5:30)
- Oh dear, my goodness! (5:44)
- Come this way please (7:36)
- Yes. Just what do you require? (3:55)
- Gone at last! (10:21)
- Found it. (3:00)
Act II (31:50)
- Did you ever see such flowers? (2:18)
- Janek, come on (2:51)
- Father! (4:20)
- Miss Marty, may I… (4:04)
- And the next! Is that the lot? (8:20)
- Is that you, Gregor? (4:48)
- Is that you, Gregor? – No, only me, only Janek (4:07)
Disc 2
Act III (31:33)
- Well? Do you hear me? (2:18)
- Who’s that? (3:24)
- Buenos días, Maxi (1:50)
- Do you want to question me? (1:53)
- The seal and the initials E.M. (2:47)
- Will you tell us your real name? (8:27)
- Feel my hands, Gregor (3:00)
- Now I am sure that death laid his hand on me (7:52)
- Announcement (1:00)
The Diary of One Who Disappeared, JW V/12 (Sung in English) (35:55)b
- One day I met a Gypsy girl (1:09)
- That black-eyed Gypsy has haunted me all the day (1:14)
- Through the twilight glow-worms dance (1:46)
- Already swallows are twittering overhead (0:53)
- Weary work is ploughing (0:51)
- Hey there, my tawny oxen (1:42)
- I’ve got a loose oxen (1:42)
- Don’t look, my oxen, so sad at my change of heart (1:06)
- Welcome, my handsome one (2:35)
- God all powerful, God eternal (4:04)
- From the ripening cornfield, oh, what sweet odours creep (3:14)
- Forest’s shady height (0:58)
- Intermezzo. Andante (piano solo) (3:01)
- See how high the sun is! (1:16)
- Now, my tawny oxen, why do you stare at me? (1:01)
- What has come over me? What is it that I have done? (1:18)
- Who can escape his fate, for what must be, must be (1:33)
- Nothing matters now until the evening shadows fall (1:18)
- See that thieving magpie suddenly fly away! (1:21)
- Now she bears my child (0:46)
- Father, how wrong you were (1:07)
- Then farewell, dearest land (2:47)
aMarty: Marie Collier, soprano; Gregor: Gregory Dempsey, tenor; Prus: Raimund Herincx, baritone; Dr. Kolenatý: Eric Shilling, bass-baritone; Chorus and Orchestra of Sadler’s Wells Opera; Charles Mackerras, conductor
bJan: Richard Lewis, tenor; Zefka: Maureen Forrester, contralto; Women’s Voices: members of the BBC Singers; Ernest Lush, piano
