Bluebeard's Castle

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Bluebeard's Castle (Hungarian: A kékszakállú herceg vára; literally: "the castle of the blue-bearded prince") is a one-act opera by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. The libretto was written by Béla Balázs, a poet and friend of the composer. It lasts only a little over an hour and there are only two singing characters onstage: Bluebeard (Kékszakállú), and his new wife Judith (Judit); the two have just eloped and Judith is coming home to Bluebeard's castle for the first time.

Bluebeard's Castle was composed in 1911 (with modifications made in 1912 and a new ending added in 1917) and first performed on May 24, 1918 in Budapest. Universal published the vocal (1921) and full score (1925). The Boosey & Hawkes full score includes only the German and English singing translations while the Dover edition reproduces the Universal Edition Hungarian/German vocal score (with page numbers beginning at 1 instead of 5). A revision of the UE vocal score in 1963 added a new German translation but seems not to have corrected any errata.

[edit] Performance history

A passage from the fifth door (four bars after figure 77) a) as in the first edition, b) ossia (originating from Bartók) pasted in the Hungarian Opera's score (described in Kroó 1981), and c) as sung by Szekeley with Dorati (1962).

The success of the ballet The wooden Prince in 1917 paved the way for the May 1918 première with the same conductor, Egisto Tango. Oszkár Kálmán was the first Bluebeard and Olga Haselbeck the first Judith. Following Balázs' exile in 1919 and the ban on his work there were no revivals until 1936. Bartók attended rehearsals and reportedly sided with the new Bluebeard, Mihály Székely, over the new conductor Sergio Failoni, who was insisting on fidelity to the printed score. On the Dorati recording Székely displays an assured sense of parlando rubato; less certain is whether Bartók sanctioned some of the changed pitches (or indeed if Székely does them on another recording made with János Ferencsik). The American première took place in 1949, in a broadcast on NBC radio, in Dallas, conducted by Antal Dorati. The first fully staged production of the opera in America was at the New York City Opera in October 1952.^[1] The London première took place in 1956 at the Rudolf Steiner Theatre during the English tour of Scottish composer Erik Chisholm directing the UCT Opera Company whose Désirée Talbot was Judith. A few years earlier, Erik Chisholm had premièred this work in South Africa at the Little Theatre in Cape Town.

[edit] Roles

Bartók includes the Castle on the dramatis personæ page.

[edit] Synopsis

Illustration by Gustave Doré for Perrault's tale Bluebeard

The basic plot is loosely based on the folk tale of Bluebeard, but is given a heavily psychological reworking (some would say psychoanalytic or psychosexual, cf. Bruno Bettelheim and The Uses of Enchantment). The setting is a huge, dark hall in a castle, with seven locked doors. Judith insists that all the doors be opened, to allow light to enter into the forbidding interior, insisting further that her demands are based in her love for Bluebeard. Bluebeard refuses, saying that they are private places not to be explored by others, and asking Judith to love him but ask no questions. Judith persists, and eventually prevails over his resistance.

The first door opens to reveal a torture chamber, stained with blood. Repelled, but then intrigued, Judith pushes on. Behind the second door is a storehouse of weapons, and behind the third a storehouse of riches. Bluebeard urges her on. Behind the fourth door is a secret garden of great beauty; behind the fifth, a window onto Bluebeard's vast kingdom. All is now sunlit, but blood has stained the riches, watered the garden, and grim clouds throw blood-red shadows over Bluebeard's kingdom.

Bluebeard pleads with her to stop - that the castle is as bright as it can get, and will not get any brighter, but Judith refuses to be stopped after coming this far, and opens the penultimate sixth door, as a shadow passes over the castle. This is the first room that has not been somehow stained with blood; a silent silvery lake is all that lies within, "a lake of tears". Bluebeard begs Judith to simply love him, and ask no more questions. The last door must be shut forever. But she persists, asking him about his former wives, and then accusing him of having murdered them, that their blood was the blood everywhere, their tears those that filled the lake, their bodies behind the last door. At this, Bluebeard hands over the last key.

Behind the door are Bluebeard's three former wives, but still alive, dressed in crowns and jewelery. They emerge silently, and Bluebeard, overcome with emotion, prostrates himself before them and praises each in turn, finally turning to Judith and beginning to praise her as his fourth wife. She is horrified, begs him to stop, but it is too late. He dresses her in the jewelery they wear, which she finds exceedingly heavy. Her head drooping under the weight, she follows the other wives along a beam of moonlight through the seventh door. It closes behind her, and Bluebeard is left alone as all fades to total darkness.

[edit] Staging

Traditionally, the set is a single dark hall surrounded by the seven doors around the perimeter. As each door is opened, a stream of symbolically colored light comes forth (except in the case of the sixth door, for which the hall is actually darkened). The symbolic colors of the seven doors are as follows:

1. (The torture chamber) Blood-red
2. (The armory) Yellowish-red
3. (The treasury) Golden
4. (The garden) Bluish-green
5. (The kingdom) White (the stage directions read: "in a gleaming torrent, the light streams in", "blue mountains")
6. (The pool of tears) Darkness; the main hall is darkened, as if a shadow had passed over
7. (The wives) Silvery (stage directions: "silver like the moon")

These lighting instructions are notably ignored in the movie (not staged) version{reference} of the opera, for which more elaborate, literal sets were constructed.

The slow orchestral introduction to the work is often preceded or overlapped by a spoken prologue, (also by Balázs, but published as "Prologue of the Bard" independently of the play). This poses to the audience the questions "Where is the stage? Is it outside, or inside?" as well as offering a warning to pay careful attention to the events about to unfold. The prologue warns the audience that the morals of the tale can apply to the real world as well as to that of Bluebeard and Judith. The character of the bard (or "regős" in the Hungarian language) is traditional in Hungarian folk music, and the words of the prologue (notably its opening lines "Haj, regő, rejtem") are associated with traditional Hungarian "regősénekek" (Regős songs), which Bartók had previously studied. The prologue is frequently omitted from performances; to some it seems heavy-handed and unnecessary, while to others it fits well with the reworked folktale atmosphere.

The stage directions call also for occasional ghostly sighs that seemingly emanate from the castle itself when some of the doors are opened. These have been implemented differently by different productions, sometimes clearly instrumentally, sometimes vocally and sometimes not easily identifiable.

[edit] Music

The most salient characteristic of the music from Bluebeard's Castle is the importance of the minor second, an interval whose dissonance is used repeatedly in both slow and fast passages to evoke aching sadness/disquiet or danger/shock respectively. The minor second is referred to as the 'blood' motif, for it is used whenever Judith notices blood in the castle. Overall the music is not atonal, although it is often polytonal, with more than one key center operating simultaneously (e.g. the leadup to the climactic opening of the fifth door). However, there are some passages (for example, door 3) where the music is tonal and mostly consonant. Many critics have found an overall key plan, as you would find in a tonal piece of music. The opera starts in a mode of F#, modulating towards C in the middle of the piece (tonally, the greatest possible distance from F#), before returning to F# towards the end. The text and setting at these points has suggested to some that the F#-C dichotomy represents darkness/light.

The vocal parts are very challenging due to the highly chromatic and speech-rhythm-inflected style that Bartók uses. For non-native speakers, the Hungarian-language libretto can also be difficult to master. These reasons, coupled with the static effect of the stage action, combine to make staged performances of the opera a comparative rarity; it more often appears in concert form.

To support the psychological undertones, Bartok calls for a large orchestra. The instrumentation is as notated below:

4 flutes (the last two double two piccolos), 2 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets in A and B-flat (first and second double two E-flat clarinets, third doubles bass clarinet), 4 bassoons (last bassoon doubles contrabassoon), 4 French horns, 4 trumpets in B-flat, 4 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, tamburo piccolo, tamtam, cymbals, suspended cymbals, xylophone (originally a tastiera - usually played by two players), triangle, 2 harps, celesta, organ, and strings.

Eight offstage brass players are also called for (4 trumpets and 4 trombones).

[edit] Origins

Balázs originally conceived the libretto for his roommate Zoltan Kodaly, in 1908, and wrote it during the following two years. It was first published serially in 1910 with a joint dedication to Kodaly and Bartók, and in 1912 appeared with the prolog in the collection "Mysteries". Bartók was motivated to complete the opera in 1911 by the closing date of the Ferenc Erkel Prize competition, for which it was duly entered. A second competition, organised by the music publishers Rózsavölgyi and with a closing date in 1912, encouraged Bartók to make some modifications to the work in order to submit it Rózsavölgyi competition. Little is known about the Ferenc Erkel Prize other than that Bluebeard's Castle did not win. The Rózsavölgyi judges, after reviewing the composition, decided that the work, with only two characters and a single location, was not dramatic enough to be considered in the category for which it was entered: theatrical music. It is thought that the panel of judges who were to look at the musical (rather than the theatrical) aspects of the competition entries never saw Bartók's entry. In 1913 Balázs produced a spoken performance at which Bartók played some piano pieces on a separate part of the program. A 1915 letter to Bartók's young wife Márta (to whom he dedicated the opera!) ends:

Now I know that I will never hear it in this life. You asked me to play it for you- I am afraid I would not be able to get through it. Still I'll try so that we may mourn it together.^[2]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Antokoletz, Elliott. Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartók: Trauma, Gender, and the Unfolding of the Unconscious, with the collaboration of Juana Canabal Antokoletz. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510383-1
• Honti, Rita. Principles of Pitch Organization in Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. Studia musicologica Universitatis Helsingiensis, 14 [13]. Diss. Helsinki University, Helsinki. 2006. ISBN 952-10-3331-2 (2nd ed. 2007.)
• Kroó, György. 1981. "Data on the Genesis of Duke Bluebeard's Castle". Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 23:79–123. (Includes facsimile of 1912 ending, amongst other things.)
• Leafstedt, Carl S.: Inside Bluebeard's Castle. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-510999-6

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[edit] External links

• Hungarian libretto
• The Birth of Cinema from the Spirit of Opera (includes literal trans. of prolog)
• Duke Bluebeard's Castle at the Internet Movie Database — the 1989 Prix Italia winning BBC production with Robert Lloyd in the title role
• Program Notes, Béla Bartók (1881-1945) Duke Bluebeard's Castle, Op. 11 (1911), BBC Proms, 2007.