Composed between 1923 and 1925, The Makropulos Affair was his penultimate opera and, like much of his later work, was inspired by his infatuation with Kamila Stösslová, a married woman much younger than himself.

The opera received its world premiere at the National Theatre in Brno on 18 December 1926, conducted by František Neumann.

He entered into a correspondence with Čapek, who was accommodating towards the idea, although legal problems in securing the rights to the play delayed work.

Janáček's writings indicate that this was a deliberate ploy to give musical embodiment to the disruptive, unsettling main character Emilia Marty/Elina Makropulos.

Only at the end of the final act, when Makropulos' vulnerability is revealed, does the music tap into and develop the rich lyrical vein that has driven it throughout.

Two years after its premiere, the opera was given in Prague, and also in Germany in 1929, but it did not become really popular until a production by the Sadler's Wells company in London in 1964, conducted by Charles Mackerras with Marie Collier as Emilia Marty.

While performed with some regularity, it has not become part of the core opera repertory in the same way as have Jenůfa, Káťa Kabanová or The Cunning Little Vixen.

In 1966, the San Francisco Opera gave the first US performances (in an English translation), also with Marie Collier in the lead role.

[2] The first New York City performance was in December 1967, by the Little Orchestra Society with Naděžda Kniplová as Emilia Marty.

[3] The first Metropolitan Opera production of the opera, in an English translation, had its opening night on 5 January 1996, but ended prematurely only a few minutes into act 1 when tenor Richard Versalle, 63, whilst climbing the 20-foot (6.1 m) ladder which was part of the set, fell 10 feet (3.0 m) from the ladder, from a heart attack, immediately after singing Vitek's line: "Too bad you can only live so long".

[7] Tomáš Šimerda directed a 2001 version of the opera for Czech television, with Gabriela Beňačková as Emilia Marty, and a cast that included Roman Sadnik, Jan Hladík, Zdeněk Šmukař, Monika Brychtová, and Pavel Kamas, with the Brno National Theatre Chorus and Orchestra and conductor Oliver von Dohnányi.

[9] Karita Mattila sang the title role in a San Francisco Opera production in November 2010.

Speaking with unusual familiarity of these long-ago events, she states that Ferdinand Gregor was the out-of-wedlock son of Baron Joseph (who was a very centered and diligent man, contradicting Dr. Kolenatý's description) and opera singer Ellian MacGregor.

They found the will where Emilia said it would be, and Jaroslav congratulates Albert on his victory – if he can prove that Ferdinand Gregor was the Baron's out-of-wedlock son.

The empty stage of the opera house A stagehand and a cleaning woman discuss Emilia's extraordinary performance.

Emilia enters, but spurns them all, including Janek, who falls under her spell, and Albert, who brings her expensive flowers.

The old Count Hauk-Šendorf enters, and thinks he recognizes Emilia as Eugenia Montez, a Romani woman with whom he had an affair in Andalusia half a century before.

He demands an explanation of her strange interest in his family, and reveals that the mother of the Baron's child was recorded as Elina Makropulos, who might be the same as Ellian MacGregor, whose love letters he has read.

Aging rapidly before the eyes of the astonished onlookers, she offers Kristina the formula so she now can become a great artist herself.