BARTOK'S "BLUEBEARD"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 927, 17 May 1957, Page 15

BARTOK'S "BLUEBEARD"

ARTOK’S only opera is based on the children’s tale of Bluebeard and his Seven Wives in the version prepared by the Hungarian poet Balazs. When Judith arrives at Bluebeard’s castle she insists on having the keys to all the doors because she loves him and will not allow any secret to come between them. "Let your castle light up, your poor, dark, cold castle," she cries. "Give me the key, because I love you." One by one the doors are opened. Behind the first is a torture chamber, behind the second an armoury and behind the third a treasury filled with jewels, stained with blood. "Open the fourth door," says Bluebeard, and here Judith finds fragrant flowers whose soil is saturated with blood and behind the fifth oor an immense landscape whose clouds throw a_ blood-tinged shadow. Two more doors remain to be opened. Bluebeard knows that these secrets will break Judith’s heart, but he cannot ‘inder her. Behind the sixth door is a vast lake, a lake of tears, and when

she comes to the last door Bluebeard tells her that here she will find his former wives. She opens it to find three women wearing crowns and _ loaded with treasures. She steps back, surprised to find they live. Bluebeard’s last tragic secret is out. He tells her he met the first wife at dawn, the second at noon, the third one in the evening, and as he turns to her, the fourth one at night. "Stop, stop, I am still here," she cries, but he goes to the third door, fetches the crown, mantle and jewellery, places them on her, and she follows the other women through the seventh door. The castle is now in complete darkness, and Bluebeard merges into it. The minstrel in the spoken prologue suggests that the tale takes place both inside and outside our own minds. Who then shall find the meaning? Here Bluebeard ‘enshrines the women as for some Treason they cannot share his life, although they are the source of his ‘inspiration. Bluebéard and Judith are forever apart-they talk to each other

alternately. in only one place does their dialogue merge, but even here they cannot reach one another. She cannot understand his secret no matter how passionately she tries, until in the end he withdraws into solitude. The opera owes some of its effects to the archaic Hungarian poetry of the libretto which, with its eight syllable, four beat line similar to the old Hungarian folk. ballads, exerts a curious rhythmic compulsion. The -vocal parts are in a kind of rhythmical speech, but the essential content of the music is in the orchestral parts, each section of which has its own colour and atmosphere. (Y¥YCs, Sunday, May 26, 7.0 p.m.)