Thirty Going On Three Hundred

Janáček’s operas may be brief, but they are unstinting, each offering a wealth of raw materials to the prospective director. This is especially true for Vĕc Makropulos: with its elements of the fantastic and its comparatively light (although never trivial) tone, the opera may be rendered as a metaphysical thriller, a magic-realist fable, or a psychological comedy of manners. Yet the opera’s surfeit of possibility seems to have overwhelmed the new production at the Deutsche Oper, which had a strong opening act and ended with satisfying image but, for much of its length, seemed to suffer a crisis of confidence in its own ideas. 

The production, directed by David Hermann, started with an intriguing proposition. The set featured a continuous room divided into two unequal parts, the larger one well-maintained and slightly bland, the smaller old…