The realisation that life can be too short... and too long

From uninspired office worker to a new life as a top soprano, Ylva Kihlberg now stars in an opera exploring mortality. Rod McPhee met her.

THE year 2000 may have been a turning point for the whole world but for Opera North’s new star it heralded a very personal departure.

Up until the turn of the Millennium Ylva Kihlberg spent most of her life working as an economist, jet-setting around Europe for a company in her Swedish homeland – and that was just the day job.

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By night the soprano, taking centre stage in The Makropulos Case which opens in Leeds next week, had an unlikely occupation for someone who’s now a rising star in the world of opera – she was the lead singer in a rock band.

“Oh my goodness, what were we called now...” says Ylva struggling to remember the name of her group “....I think it was S-Decibel, yes, that’s right, S-Decibel. It all seems like a long time ago.

“We used to do pop/rock songs, in fact for a long time we just did covers, but I really, really loved it, but I couldn’t go back to singing like that now – my voice is just so different.

“Sometimes I still miss that immediacy you get at a rock concert. As much as I love classical, you don’t tend to get the same instant reaction of people cheering and clapping and screaming when you start singing. With opera, they show their appreciation, often, but it’s much more reserved and they usually save it till the end of a performance.

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“But while I was in the band I also performed with a choir and it was seeing some of the soloists perform there that made me realise I wanted to pursue opera as a vocation.”

Rock music’s loss was very much classical music’s gain and after training and being signed up with the Royal Opera in Copenhagen in 2000, Ylva spent the next decade winning plaudits across Europe and on the occasional trip to the US. But her appearance in The Makropulos Case, the third production in Opera North’s autumn season, represents her UK debut.

Leoš Janájek’s opera of 1926 focuses almost entirely on one woman, Emilia Marty, who has lived for 337 years after consuming a potion when she was a child.

She was born as Elina Makropulos but over the centuries kept a low profile by adopting various titles and personas. We meet her in Prague in 1912 when she is, appropriately enough, an opera diva. But this is just as the potion’s life-preserving effects are wearing off.

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“It’s not easy playing someone who is over 300 years old, I can tell you. She isn’t, as you’d expect, a normal person but she has to put up this front the whole time because she’s so well known.” says Ylva.

“But then we also get to see her behind the scenes and she’s growing increasingly tired and weary and yet, even after being around for so long, she still wants to get her hands on more of this potion so she can extend her life further.”

This dark meditation on life has been described as “a philosophical comedy” and the scattering of humour in the plotline does lend itself towards this categorisation. But the themes of unbridled vanity are thought-provoking on a profound level.

“The themes are also very relevant to today,” says Ylva “When you think about how we increasingly live in a society where appearances and youth are seen as so important.

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“But this shows you the other side of things – what it would mean to live for hundreds of years and the effects that might have on you.”

A long journey with Janacek

The staging of The Makropulos Case represents the culmination of a series of Janájek pieces performed in recent years by Opera North.


This production, by director Tom Cairns, premiered in August at the Edinburgh International Festival.


The opera will be performed at Leeds Grand Theatre on October 18, 24, 27 and November 2, before going on tour to Nottingham, Newcastle and Salford throughout November. Tel. 0844 8482700 or visit www.leedsgrandtheatre.co.uk

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