Houston Symphony has scheduled only two performances of Béla Bartók’s magnificent opera Bluebeard’s Castle. One occurred last night, Saturday, and the final performance is Sunday matinee. This review will not bolster attendance as it will likely appear only a few hours before Sunday’s program. I wish you had been there.
Bluebeard (1911, first performance 1918) is one of the 20th century’s great operatic works. Expressionistic, haunting, forceful, mysterious – it was Bartók’s only work in that venue, and what a pity. His librettist, Béla Balázs, a Hungarian Jew, had his work banned by the right-wing government at the time, but Bartok stood by him in protest. If his favorite librettist wasn’t allowed on stage, then neither would this composer go on.
Bartok would write three ballets or pantomimes, but devoted himself to orchestral music (three piano concertos, a stunning violin concerto), some songs, but primarily to gathering and collating Hungarian folk tunes. With his friend and contemporary composer Zoltán Koldály, the pair traversed central Europe, in whose roots Bartók found his distinct musical style. He championed it, used it, and the love never left him. He never wrote another opera again.
Bluebeard is an early work and shows the influence of the composers he adamantly admired – Richard Strauss with his mammoth orchestral coloring and majestic orchestration; Debussy with his lace-like lightness; and Wagner, of course, for his epic nature and tonal idiosyncrasies. The opera is one of a kind, a swirling dive into the psyche of both murderous Bluebeard (baritone Gábor Bretz) and virginal new bride Judith (mezzo Ekaterina Gubanova).
The expressionistic score wallops you in sonic splendor as it depicts this ancient fairy tale, symbolically adapted by Balázs from Charles Perrault’s classic Barbe-Blue, the Brothers Grimm’s rehash Blaubart, and Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Ariane et Barbe-bleue. But Bartók makes the old refreshingly new and utterly vibrant if not terrifying.
There are rumors about rich and powerful Bluebeard swirling through the countryside. His three previous wives have mysteriously disappeared. In love with him, Judith abandons her financé to marry this deeply troubled man. She adores him, and he obviously adores her for her youth, beauty, and devotion. His castle is dank and dark, its walls weeping. No windows, no light. Black as night. Judith tempts him to open the seven bolted great doors of his castle. Give me the keys, she sings. I will bring sunshine into your life. Kiss me, he pleads. No, open the doors, she insists.
Judith will not be assuaged. He relents, knowing what awaits. One by one she unlocks the doors. The first is a torture chamber, bathed in blood. The next is his armory, with its swords tinged red. She goes on, unafraid. The third is the treasury, first bathed in light then slowly revealed to be covered in blood. The fourth is a secret garden with lush roses, but those too turn out to be nourished by a bloody soil. Bluebeard wants her to stop. Don’t open, he cries. But she plows forward. The fifth door reveals a blaze of light as his kingdom is revealed in all its majesty. Bartok’s tone painting is a blast of C Major in all its splendor. It’s the apex of the one-act opera, a scene straight out of Strauss at his chromatic best.
But Bartok’s mighty anthem is elemental, primal, scary in its power. Undeterred, lured on by her persistence to discover everything about her husband, the sixth door is a lake of tears, shimmering under Bartók’s exemplary use of clarinets and harps. Then the final door. Judith is adamant, impatient. Bluebeard is resigned, defeated. He knows what will happen. Inside are his three previous wives, alive but imprisoned. Judith now realizes her fate. Her love has curdled both of them.
The stage light fades from Gubanova, she goes dark, as if Judith has entered the doomed room. Bluebeard is alone in his dank castle with no sunlight. Slowly the light fades from Bretz also. The one-act opera ends on a soft discordant note as in the haunting opening phrase we’ve heard throughout sadly fades away into nothingness.
Symbolism, patriarchy, a woman’s unceasing curiosity, a husband’s willingness to hide his emotions – what else is in this opera? Its very looseness can mean almost anything, but Bartok’s grand music, those tone paintings of what is contained in the rooms, the psychological undercurrents of the libretto are there to be savored, devoured. The opera leaves you drained, like both characters.
But Bluebeard goes on in other tales to marry three more women. Perrault’s story has his final wife and her sister calling for help to her brother. He rushes in and kills the beast, and everyone lives happily ever after. Bartók and Belász will have none of this. This is fin de siecle Europe, and WW I is on the horizon. Europe will soon enter its own dank castle, weeping its own lake of tears and blood. Bartók – with Strauss’ most terrifyingly modern Salome and Elektra – were the first witnesses of the conflagration.
Houston Symphony maestro Juraj Valčuha led a stunning interpretation, as did his immense orchestra, and his two outstanding soloists. Gubanova’s dark mezzo is creamy, almost physical. In her blood-red off-the-shoulder gown, she glowed and glistened as she made her demands. Bretz’s baritone is a thing of wonder. Chasm-deep, his Bluebeard was a man who has seen all this before and knows exactly how it will end. He is doomed, and his voice peeled out his wounded pride unable to be set free.
With last season’s somewhat staged version of Strauss’ Salome, this concert version of Bluebeard’s Castle, dramatically and lovingly lighted by Matthew Webb, was just as impressive. Two masters of early 20th century opera at the top of their game, accompanied by a radiant Houston orchestra at the top of theirs. More of these, please, Houston Symphony.
As a tasty appetizer, Act I consisted of three operatic excerpts. The “Mad Hatter’s Tea Party” from U. Chin’s opera Alice in Wonderland (2007). This lively little sequence skittered along, light and airy, almost ticking with glee like an unhinged clock. The strings got a strenuous workout. Next up, Prokofiev’s Suite from The Love of Three Oranges, his commedia dell’arte opera, which premiered in Chicago in 1921. His unique style, playful and brutalist at the same time, is best known for the “March,” which has become world famous with its use in cartoons, commercials, and movie soundtracks. The Suite’s a delight, and the Houston Symphony played it as if on a lark.
Then the brooding “Four Sea Interludes” from Benjamin Britten’s brooding opera Peter Grimes. If you want an impressionistic take on the ocean here it is – the sea in all its glory and majesty, swelling in rhythmic waves, booming with trombones, calm with gulls cawing above. This is high-end tone painting, impressionistic like Debussy, primitive like Stravinsky, but all Britten. Maestro Valčuha led the orchestra with passion and intensity and unalloyed power. May he stay in Houston for years to come.
Bluebeard’s Castle continues at 2 p.m. Sunday, February 16 at Jones Hall, 615 Louisiana. For more information, call 713-224-7575 or visit houstonsymphony.org. $40-$110.
