THE BLUEBEARD CASTEL
Béla Bartók
The only opera of Béla Bartók
As Béla Bartók’s first opera composing effort, Bluebeard’s Castle is a miraculous accomplishment – a flawless, captivating drama and one of the seminal works of the 20th century. Based on the sophisticated libretto fashioned by Béla Balázs from Charles Perrault’s fairy tale, whose suggestive imagery is rich with interpretive possibilities, inviting audiences to discover their meanings within the drama, Bluebeard’s Castle eerie score echoes Bartók’s own sense of alienation as a result of the burden of genius, his futile search of the ideal companion, his irredeemable spiritual loneliness. Under the baton of Cristian Mandeal, the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra bring majestically across the tension and anguish of this tale about soul-searching, vulnerability, and the fear of revealing our darkest secrets to those we love.
The opera reinterprets Bluebeard’s story in light of the era’s European preoccupations with symbolism, Nietzsche’s philosophy, and the emergent field of psychology via Freudian unconscious mind theory. From this angle, the character of Bluebeard, who is usually depicted as a monster who killed his wives, becomes in Bartók’s vision a symbol of the lonely man, subject to his inescapable destiny. His dialogues with his last wife, Judith, are an opportunity to probe the mysteries and sufferings of the soul confronted with incompleteness and near-miss in his quest for perfect love.
Cast
ALLISON COOK
mezzo-soprano
DEREK WELTON
baritone
Awards
The operas in concert performances brought the George Enescu Festival its first International Opera Awards nomination, in 2020.
Reviews
A STORY ABOUT SOLITUDE, INTROSPECTION, AND DEATH, PRESENTED IN A HOPSCOTCH GAME CONTOUR
“Bluebeard’s Castle” is the only opera composed by Bela Bartók. Based on Charles Perrault’s fairy tale, but transformed by the imagination of librettist Bela Balázs into an entirely different story, will be accompanied by multimedia projections. They were created by director Nona Ciobanu and were made together with Peter Košir, architect and visual artist – designed and assembled in a surprising, immersive discourse.
In short, the libretto speaks of Bluebeard, the prince with a dark reputation who remarries and brings his new wife, Judith, to his castle with seven rooms. He allows Judith to enter every room except one. Eventually, Judith ignores the interdiction and isn’t persuaded by the numerous supplications of the prince to respect it. Beyond the seventh door, she finds overwhelming darkness.
Over the years, the story has been explored mainly from its symbolic perspective. According to some interpretations, the seven rooms signify Bluebeard’s soul, and the story is about self-knowledge, soul-searching, the access we allow ourselves and others into our personal space.
Director Nona Ciobanu proposes a visual convention that helps fathom some of the libretto’s metaphors and imagines a hopscotch which, like Ariadne’s thread, will lead the spectator through the secrets of the text and the music.
“The video projections are an extension of Bartók’s music and the poetry in Balázs’s text. Together with Peter Košir, who is an architect and a visual artist, I have tried to define this space that glides from the outside to the inside of the characters, and the other way round, through images that compose the microcosm and macrocosm of the hopscotch sometimes in an abstract manner, sometimes concretely”, says director Nona Ciobanu.
According to the director’s vision, the inside-outside play proposed by Bartók’s work will include spectators and even the entire concert hall, aiming to suggest viewers and listeners their actual, direct participation in this journey of discovery.
“I have taken elements from the architecture of the Romanian Athenaeum and transferred and transformed them into the visual script, so that they sometimes become living and part of the story. This continuous metamorphosis engages from the very beginning of the performance two defining elements of theatre: the stage and the curtain, which appear explicitly or transfigured in a few key moments of the show”, reveals Nona Ciobanu.