Vec Makropulos at Opéra national de Paris - Opéra Bastille

"Who would want to live for eternity?" asks Emilia Marty as she is about to die, brandishing the formula for the elixir that has allowed her to live for 337 years ... For his penultimate opera, Janá?ek drew upon the literary works of Karel ?apek, a pioneer of science fiction, and dramatises his singular story of law suits and eternal life, a cross between detective fiction and metaphysics.
Krzysztof Warlikowski's hypersensitive theatre transposes the elixir of immortality into our contemporary mythology. His production is haunted by the black and white destiny of Marilyn Munroe: the eternal woman, both adulated and sacrificed on the altar of stardom and found dead after an overdose of barbiturates...
Conducted by Susanna Mälkki, Janá?ek's music electrifies the storm of desires, the lust for lust and the terror of death that sweep through this microcosm of Prague society.