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.

Artists

Stanley Bevan, Gregory Dempsey, Jenny Hill, Eric Shilling, Marie Collier, Raimund Herincx (bass-baritone), Joan Davies, Michael Maurel, John Chorley, Cragg Sinkinson, Margaret Gale, Richard Lewis (soloist), Ernest Lush (accompaniment, soloist), Maureen Forrester (soloist)

Sadler's Wells Opera Orchestra, Sadler's Wells Opera Chorus, BBC Singers, Sir Charles Mackerras