At age 7, it started: a lifelong passion, sparked in the dark of a theater. Daniela Mack was attending her first opera, Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata. It would plant the seeds of a career for the Buenos Aires-born singer, a mezzo-soprano who would one day tour the world’s great opera houses, with a voice critics compared to “polished onyx.”

Soprano Karita Mattila has been busy. It’s 6:15pm in Helsinki, and she’s been preparing for a new production to open the Finnish National Opera’s fall season: Covid fan tutte.

Some mysteries are more puzzling than others. At first encounter, the secrets of The Makropulos Case appear buried as deeply as the secret its enigmatic heroine conceals until the final moments. The audience shares in the guesswork of those who try to grasp Emilia Marty’s intentions until, like them, we stand awed before her revelation, grateful for our mortality even as we dread its approach. No one can leave The Makropulos Case unmoved.