SPOILERS I really like the production design of this 1995 Glyndbourne Makropulos Affair. I do have to headcannon that the lead singer looks younger to the other characters than she does to the audience; but she’s doing a really interesting/creepy job of suddenly looking *even* older, depending on the angle and expression. I’m trying to decide if the costume designer deliberately made her look ironically younger in her last couple of scenes before death, mainly by virtue of abandoning the skull-hugging scarves and headpieces she wore in the first two acts. I do kind of wish she’d run off with the crazy old Count who seems to be one of the few people she still has human feelings for.
Come to think of it, Count Hauk-Šendorf looks slightly younger than Emila in this production, which has to be a deliberate artistic choice (they could have made him up to look seventy+, and usually do if the tenor singing him isn’t really that old) but is very weird, especially since the singer is doing a pretty convincing portrayal of dementia — you can see his memory shorting out every few minutes.
Mooncustafer 