Janacek - The Makropulos Affair, The Diary of One Who Disappeared
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Label: Somm
Cat No: ARIADNE50442
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 2
Release Date: 21st November 2025
Contents
Artists
Marie Collier (soprano)Gregory Dempsey (tenor)
Raimund Herincx (baritone)
Eric Shilling (bass-baritone)
Stanley Bevan (tenor)
Jenny Hill (mezzo-soprano)
Joan Davies (contralto)
Michael Maurel (bass)
John Chorley (tenor)
Cragg Sinkinson (tenor)
Margaret Gale (contralto)
Richard Lewis (tenor)
Maureen Forrester (contralto)
Ernest Lush (piano)
Members of the BBC Singers
Chorus and Orchestra of Sadler’s Wells Opera
Conductor
Charles MackerrasWorks
The Diary of One Who DisappearedThe Makropulos Affair
Artists
Marie Collier (soprano)Gregory Dempsey (tenor)
Raimund Herincx (baritone)
Eric Shilling (bass-baritone)
Stanley Bevan (tenor)
Jenny Hill (mezzo-soprano)
Joan Davies (contralto)
Michael Maurel (bass)
John Chorley (tenor)
Cragg Sinkinson (tenor)
Margaret Gale (contralto)
Richard Lewis (tenor)
Maureen Forrester (contralto)
Ernest Lush (piano)
Members of the BBC Singers
Chorus and Orchestra of Sadler’s Wells Opera
Conductor
Charles MackerrasAbout
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 fewer 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.
Cast (The Makropulos Affair):
- Vítek: Stanley Bevan (tenor)
- Albert Gregor: Gregory Dempsey (tenor)
- Krista: Jenny Hill (mezzo-soprano)
- Doctor Kolenatý: Eric Shilling (bass-baritone)
- Emilia Marty: Marie Collier (soprano)
- Jaroslav Prus: Raimund Herincx (baritone)
- Charwoman: Joan Davies (contralto)
- Stage carpenter: Michael Maurel (bass)
- Janek: John Chorley (tenor)
- Hauk-Šendorf: Cragg Sinkinson (tenor)
- Chambermaid: Margaret Gale (contralto)
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 fewer 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.
Cast (The Makropulos Affair):
- Vítek: Stanley Bevan (tenor)
- Albert Gregor: Gregory Dempsey (tenor)
- Krista: Jenny Hill (mezzo-soprano)
- Doctor Kolenatý: Eric Shilling (bass-baritone)
- Emilia Marty: Marie Collier (soprano)
- Jaroslav Prus: Raimund Herincx (baritone)
- Charwoman: Joan Davies (contralto)
- Stage carpenter: Michael Maurel (bass)
- Janek: John Chorley (tenor)
- Hauk-Šendorf: Cragg Sinkinson (tenor)
- Chambermaid: Margaret Gale (contralto)
Sound/Video
Paused
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1The Makropulos Affair, Act I: Prelude
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2The Makropulos Affair, Act I: Oh dear, my goodness!
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3The Makropulos Affair, Act I: Come this way please
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4The Makropulos Affair, Act I: Yes. Just what do you require?
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5The Makropulos Affair, Act I: Gone at last!
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6The Makropulos Affair, Act I: Found it.
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7The Makropulos Affair, Act II: Did you ever see such flowers?
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8The Makropulos Affair, Act II: Janek, come on
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9The Makropulos Affair, Act II: Father!
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10The Makropulos Affair, Act II: Miss Marty, may I...
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11The Makropulos Affair, Act II: And the next! Is that the lot?
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12The Makropulos Affair, Act II: Is that you, Gregor?
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13The Makropulos Affair, Act II: Is that you, Gregor? - No, only me, only Janek
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14The Makropulos Affair, Act III: Well? Do you hear me?
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15The Makropulos Affair, Act III: Who’s that?
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16The Makropulos Affair, Act III: Buenos días, Maxi
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17The Makropulos Affair, Act III: Do you want to question me?
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18The Makropulos Affair, Act III: The seal and the initials E.M.
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19The Makropulos Affair, Act III: Will you tell us your real name?
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20The Makropulos Affair, Act III: Feel my hands, Gregor
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21The Makropulos Affair, Act III: Now I am sure that death laid his hand on me
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22Radio announcement
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23The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 1. One day I met a Gypsy girl
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24The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 2. That black-eyed Gypsy has haunted me all the day
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25The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 3. Through the twilight glow-worms dance
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26The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 4. Already swallows are twittering overhead
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27The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 5. Weary work is ploughing
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28The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 6. Hey there, my tawny oxen
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29The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 7. I’ve got a loose axle
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30The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 8. Don’t look, my oxen, so sad at my change of heart
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31The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 9. Welcome, my handsome one
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32The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 10. God all powerful, God eternal
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33The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 11. From the ripening cornfield, oh, what sweet odours creep
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34The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 12. Forest’s shady height
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35The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 13. Intermezzo. Andante
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36The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 14. See how high the sun is!
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37The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 15. Now, my tawny oxen, why do you stare at me?
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38The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 16. What has come over me? What is it that I have done?
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39The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 17. Who can escape his fate, for what must be, must be
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40The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 18. Nothing matters now until evening shadows fall
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41The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 19. See that thieving magpie suddenly fly away!
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42The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 20. Now she bears my child
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43The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 21. Father, how wrong you were
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44The Diary of One Who Disappeared: 22. Then farewell, dearest land
Europadisc Review
On 12 November 1925, Leoš Janáček completed initial revisions to the final act of his penultimate opera, Věc Makropulos (The Makropulos Affair). Just five days later, in Schenectady, New York, Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras was born; he would go on to become Janáček’s – and The Makropulos Affair’s – most ardent champion. Marking Charles Mackerras’s centenary, the Somm label have dug up another treasure from the archives: a February 1964 broadcast of the first UK production of the opera, sung in English by the Sadler’s Wells Opera, under Mackerras’s baton. It is a remarkable BBC recording of a production that proved astonishingly durable, lasting well into Sadler’s Wells’ transformation as English National Opera at the London Coliseum.
The cast is headed by the magnificent Australian soprano Marie Collier as Emilia Marty/Elina Makropulos, the celebrated singer whose life has spanned more than three centuries after she was forced to test an elixir of life at the court of Habsburg Emperor Rudolf II. This was one of Marie Collier’s most celebrated roles, and years later, well after her early death in 1971 at the age of just 44, both Mackerras and his wife Judy spoke in glowing terms of her artistry. It is a huge shame that she made no more than a handful of commercial recordings, among which easily the best known is her Chrysothemis on Georg Solti’s visceral 1966 recording of Richard Strauss’s Elektra.
Broadcasts from the later years capture Mackerras and Collier in The Makropulos Affair in better sound at the Coliseum, but Lani Spahr has done a splendid job of audio restoration on this historic broadcast of what was only the fourth night of a landmark production, which excited the interest of the British opera-going public as no previous Janáček opera had done. It is all the more remarkable for the fact that this work, based on the play of the same name by Karel Čapek, with its extensive legal wranglings, convoluted back-story and lively conversational tone, lacks the obvious lyrical appeal of such works as Katya Kabanova and The Cunning Little Vixen. And, notwithstanding the mono sound, the sheer excitement of the occasion is vividly captured.
From the very start, Mackerras and the Sadler’s Wells Orchestra are right inside this music, taking the punchy opening Prelude, with its brilliant fanfares and soaring string lines, at a thrilling tempo. All the familiar Mackerras hallmarks are there: urgent speeds, biting textural depth and responsiveness to the music’s compacted lyricism, which eventually blooms in the intensely moving final scene. Collier’s vibrant, finely-focussed soprano conveys the dormant passion underlying the central character’s ennui, but also her fragility and vulnerability. Few other singers have been quite so natural a fit in this role.
The supporting cast is full of Sadler’s Wells/ENO stalwarts in their prime: tenor Gregory Dempsey sings the part of Albert Gregor, who falls head-over-heels in love with Marty, unaware that she is his distant ancestor. His adversary in the lawsuit which takes up so much of the opera, Baron Prus, is sung by baritone Raimund Herincx, while the lawyer Dr Kolenatý is in the secure hands of bass-baritone Eric Shilling, who would go on to take the part in revivals for several more decades. All three sing with a keen feeling for the text, and – aided no doubt by the more intimate acoustic of the Sadler’s Wells Theatre when compared with the Coliseum – the words are perfectly projected. The intricacies of the arguments and legal disputes make this an opera where singing in the language of the audience brings huge benefits, and Norman Tucker’s translation does the job very well.
In the smaller roles – all minutely characterised by Janáček – the tenors Stanley Bevan as the clerk Vítek and Cragg Sinkinson as the senile Count Hauk-Šendorf (Marty’s former lover from decades ago) are memorably individual, and again project the text in a manner from which present-day singers could learn much. Mezzo Jenny Hill and tenor John Chorley play Krista and her ill-fated sweetheart Janek, while contralto Joan Davies and bass Michael Maurel raise several laughs as the comedic charwoman and stage carpenter at the beginning of Act 2.
With a slender discography that reflects this work’s somewhat Cinderella status among Janáček’s mature operas, this release is an essential addition, not least for preserving Collier’s towering yet highly sympathetic portrayal of the main character, one of the most enigmatic and intriguing in all the composer’s works. Acts 1 and 2 are contained on the first disc, so there is room on disc 2 for a bonus, and it is a generous one. The song-cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared is another quintessential Janáček work, and here it is sung by the classic pairing of tenor Richard Lewis and contralto Maureen Forrester, with Ernest Lush at the piano, in a BBC broadcast from July 1956.
As in Makropulos, an English translation brings enormous benefits for an Anglophone audience in a piece where the often reflective text (the tenor ploughman captivated by a young gypsy girl) needs to be understood in order for the highly idiosyncratic but wonderfully compelling music to have its greatest impact. Here the translation is by Bernard Keeffe, whose centenary also fell this year, and it is vividly conveyed by the singers, with sterling support from Lush, who also enters the spotlight in the mysterious central Intermezzo.
With typically detailed and absorbing booklet notes from writer and broadcaster Nigel Simeone, this is a really splendid anniversary tribute to one of the greatest of all Janáček exponents, and no lover of Czech music or 20th-century opera should be without it. The thrill of discovery at a time when Janáček’s music was coming to wider attention on the British musical scene is palpable on every track, and Somm have once again rescued a pair of real treasures from the vaults.
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