Duke Bluebeard's Castle
A Kékszakállů herceg vára. Opera in one act, Op.11 (1911).
Libretto by Béla Balázs after fairy tale by Perrault.
An Inktroduction by Chua Gan Ee
Béla Bartók's opera, written in 1911 – a youthful work of immense
promise and assurance – is perhaps the one Debussy did not write. It was
Bartók's singular foray into the genre: on hearing it, one would certainly wish
he had left us a more fulfilling legacy. Bluebeard's Castle is an
exercise in symbolist drama; and Bartók's score aptly serves its purpose –
it is here that we may experience the composer at his most sensual, as he
strives bar-after-bar at creating atmosphere to Béla Balázs' superb text;
pointing the way to the Bartók of The Miraculous Mandarin (1919) - even
the much later Concerto for Orchestra – and yet wholly different. Here the
composer's sole preoccupation with textures and timbral effects far
outweigh his later experiments; a world apart from the more angular and
idiomatic Bartók we are more familiar with. Here, listeners will be able to
recall sporadic influences of Debussy – whom Bartók greatly admired –
especially in the orchestral writing; and glimpses of Richard Strauss in
the work's operatic treatment.
The Music.
The music is ringed round a symmetrical sequence of tonal regions, and
always ends where it had begun. Various motivic features, especially that
associated with the recurrent image of blood, are deployed to lend the
score a suitably post-Wagnerian coherence and continuity. As in the German
composer's music dramas, Bartók's Bluebeard does not have the characters
singing arias at each other.
Melodic formulae are, nevertheless, inventive
and the composer obliges with memorable lyric ariosos. Here, as in his
other works, the elements of folk-music are transmuted into richly
patterned, sophisticated art music; and simple, modal outlines are made to
serve various interesting purposes to underline the action on stage. As
each of the seven doors is opened, the music offers vivid pictures in
sound; and even more so, conveys the emotion and shifts of mood – often
extreme – of the two characters.
The Tale.
Duke Bluebeard is an eccentric figure who dwells alone in a stony, Gothic
castle; totally devoid of windows and even the tiniest glimpse of sunlight.
The air within his spooky domain is deathly stale, bearing unmistakably the
stench of blood. A vast circular hall – empty, dark, as if hewn out of rock
- is flanked on both sides by stairways: the one on the left is the
entrance into the castle; and the one on the right leads upwards to seven
enormous doors.
Bluebeard enters with his new bride, Judith, and
immediately she begins to take in her gloomy surroundings. Bluebeard
questions her continually if she is afraid, but she brushes the queries
aside – and the rumours she had heard about her sinister groom – and chirps
confidently that she will bring "warmth, brightness and love" to the
castle. However, the man maintains obstinately that "nought can glitter in
my castle". At this, Judith commends herself to him submissively. But as
soon as she becomes aware of the seven huge doors above them she demands to
know what lies behind each of them. Bluebeard warns her of her request,
calling to mind the gossip which runs amok of his evil-doings she had
surely heard. Judith stubbornly refuses to give in, and insists that her
love for him allows her every right to unlock the doors. Bluebeard's
eventual acquiescence spells eternal damnation for the woman.
The first door opens to reveal the castle's torture chamber – shackles,
daggers, racks, pincers and branding irons; and beyond this hideous
artillery, stone walls coated and dripping with blood. Behind the second
door she discovers his armoury - Bluebeard's collection of murder-weapons,
all unsuspectingly stained with blood. Door number three opens on the
castle's treasury – the man's luxurious vault of fortune amassed over many
lifetimes. Blood is ever-present, even here, amidst the gold and glitter.
The fourth door hides behind it a secret garden; its various shades of
green paling in comparison to the odious crimson of blood spattered all
over. The fifth door opens to a grand vista of land over the hills and
further, far beyond the castle's exteriors; the endless domain which is no
one else's but Bluebeard. A blood-stained cloud hovers ominously above, and
blocks out every ray of light. Behind the sixth door, a lake of tears
greets silently its astounded visitor: its stagnant pool giving no clue as
to its unfathomable depths of despair.
The final door opens to Judith a fatal revelation: the decapitated bodies of Bluebeard's three previous
wives, each representing morning, noon and night; and Judith, alas, must
join them …
The legend of Bluebeard was thought to have been based on the
17th-century figure of Gilles de Rais, dubbed the "wickedest man in
the world", who at the time of his death had murdered, by way of ritual
sacrifice, 800 children. The folklore which forms the basis of
Balázs' operatic adaptation offers a chilling portrayal of the wife-killer
as the embodiment of pure evil: as this CD booklet-notes aptly describes, "
… [Bluebeard's Castle] has the archetypal quality of something that is
part fairy-story, part Freudian case-study. The confrontation between a
passionate yet ultimately submissive woman and a charismatic, sinister man
is the stuff of high drama, and Bartók (right), prompted by Balázs' text, presents
that drama as the enactment of a single catastrophic event …". Balázs' model
for his symbolist ethos was none other than Maeterlinck; and Bluebeard
seeks in some ways to mimic the latent qualities in the latter's Pelléas et
Mélisande.
Left: Detail from a stage design for Bluebeard's Castle, created by Wilhelm Matenaar for a 1984 production in Berlin.
Ring of Drama
Behind his seventh door, Chua Gan Ee hides his ghastly collection of mutilated musicians... The Inkpot reviewers often go there to dispose of unwanted friends, or just for kicks.
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