Duke Bluebeard Research Articles

The Director’s Embodiment of Bella Bartok’s Opera "Duke Bluebeard’s Castle":Compositional and Production Aspect

It was considered the main director's approaches to ideological and thematic analysis of B. Bartok's opera "Duke Bluebeard's Castle", which formed the basis of the concept of the play produced by the applicant. The author outlined the compositional features of the realized performance in comparison with the composer's idea. The applicant highlights the features of the director's interpretation of modern opera in the postmodern aesthetics, based on various methodological approaches, including analytical, communicative and structural-systemic methods. Factors that cause the phenomenon of abuse in human relations have been analyzed in the world of modern trends. There are options for triggers that can provoke the violent existence of partners in modern society. The need to introduce into the traditional composition of B. Bartok's opera the second part-reflection with a specialist psychologist in order to draw attention to the problem of violence in relationships and the desire to encourage society to dialogue on this topic. The moments of interpretation of musical and theatrical works of the above aesthetic direction are marked. The author's point of view on the problem of violence is proposed, where the victim, in connection with the acquired negative experience, turns himself into an abuser. The main markers of abusers' behavior and unhealthy relationships are highlighted. The vectors that guide the consideration of the causal relationships of this kind of relationship are marked so that directors can understand the nuances of the behavior of abusers and victims of violence. The author explains the directorial embodiment of an operatic work of the Art Nouveau period with clearly delineated characteristic features of time and place of action in the conditions of theatrical postmodernist orientation. The specifics of the director's interpretation of B. Bartok's opera "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" in the author's art project are determined. The perspective for further scientific research of the problem of abuser and its reflections on theatrical stages is modeled

Образ Синей Бороды в эпоху символизма

The article examines the symbolics in the play “Ariana and Bluebeard, or Vain Deliverance” (1896) by the Belgian writer Maurice Maeterlinck and in the libretto “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” by the Hungarian writer Béla Balazs (1911). There is a transformation of the Bluebeard story from folklore to the field of symbolist and neo-romantic literature, where it undergoes significant changes, being transformed into a “new age myth.”

The Director-Research Concept of Stage Influences of Bela Bartok’s Opera "Duke Bluebeard’s Castle"

It was considered the director's approach to modern interpretations of Béla Bartók's opera "Duke Bluebeard's Castle". The research methodology is based on the basic provisions and concepts of musical directing, developed during the twentieth century and supplemented in the process of modern development of musical theater. There were analyzed recent studies of B. Bartok's opera and the work of playwright Béla Balázs. Based on this analysis, the direction of scientific work is clarified, which relates mainly to the intonation nature of the opera "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" and its compositional and dramatic features. The director's research concept of the stage incarnations of B. Bartok's opera opens a perspective for further scientific investigations. The basis on which the study is based is two opera performances in 2020- 2021, created with the participation of the world-renowned Ukrainian artists: Oksana Liniv, director of the opera evening "Judith" at the Bavarian State Opera; Andriy Zholdak, Ukrainian director that staged the play "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" at the Lyon Opera. In the analysis of these opera productions, three main directing principles have been identified, by means of which the material of the opera is actualized, in accordance with today's challenges: these are the principles of supplementing the performance, actualizing of the theme of the performance and visual detailing. There were considered the main fundamental concepts laid down by the authors of the work under study: composer Béla Bartok and libretto by author Béla Balázs, that became the basis for modern directorial interpretations. Emphasis is placed on the director's role in creating a directorial-research concept in the stage embodiment of the opera, which should find a connection between the ideological and artistic content of the opera and modern aspects of world society, which faces current issues of feminism and the role of women in the modern society. The question of gender and its showing on stage is also raised. The director's point of view on these phenomena is reflected in the stage incarnations of the opera "Duke Bluebeard’s Castle", modern productions of which are an indicator of the vector of development of the world music directing in the period 2020-2021. The novelty of the study lies in the selection of the main directing principles of work on the stage realization of B. Bartok's opera "The Duke of Bluebeard" based on the analysis of the productions of this opera in 2020-2021.

György Kurtág, Samuel Beckett: Fin de partie – scènes et monologues, opéra en un acte.

Beckett's 1976 poem ‘Roundelay’ is sung as a Prologue to Kurtág's opera, Samuel Beckett: Fin de partie – scènes et monologues, opéra en un acte, which was premiered at La Scala, Milan, on 15 November 2018. As an opening gesture it recalls Duke Bluebeard's Castle, in which a spoken Prologue enigmatically conjures a world of fairy-tale that simultaneously reveals a psycho-drama (where is the stage? outside or inside?). ‘Roundelay’ is yet more enigmatic but similarly prescient: we are entering a time-space in which the sound of words is as important as their meaning, and where lonely characters attempt to cope with their sense of imminent end, mysteriously near and yet also bafflingly unreachable. The voice itself is also prophetic, sung as it is by the opera's only female character, Nell, who in Pierre Audi's production is only partly visible, illuminated as if a ghost in a spot of light amid the darkness, hovering well above the stage. There is a normatively bleak perspective on gender at play throughout: Nell's other-worldliness and incongruous melodiousness here anticipate her barely acknowledged death and the consequent obliteration of love.

In Search of Meaning in Context: Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle

Every culture is conquering of life, unification of all manifes­ tations of life (that is, of course, never unification of concepts) with such force that whatever part we approach from a totality of life, we have to see, deep down, same thing. In real culture, everything becomes symbolic, because everything is expression­ and everything is equally only expression-of only important thing: manner of reaction to life, manner with which to­ tal self of individual turns toward totality of (Lukacs 1977:424)2 These words come from one of those uniquely personal essays that Gyorgy Lukacs wrote during first decade of twentieth century, and that provided basis for his major book on aesthetics, Soul and Forms (1978). What does Lukacs want to say here? First and foremost, that there is an immediate connection between life and art; accordingly, in art the only important thing [is] ... manner with which total self of individual turns toward totality of life. But Lukacs goes further: he emphasizes fact that connection is between totality of life and totality of artwork. Art is symbolic, but not because its individual el­ ements have symbolic meaning with reference to an everyday reality. The symbolism of art lies in that it is, in its totality, an emotional/intellectual response to underlying question oflife. For Lukacs, there is essentially one way to respond with a total work to totality of life, though this allows for infinite artistic solutions. The key is in inward-turning direction of art, meaning that it exclusively represents struggles of soul. This does not mean psychological drama, but rather an emotionally dense, imaginary stage for artwork that in its symbolic connections is as complex and contradictory as reality. According to Lukacs, only such a narrowing of subject allows art to face drama of reality:

Terayama Shūji’s Red Riding Hood

Terayama Shūji (1935–1983) is best known for his work with the experimental theater group Tenjō Sajiki. He was also a poet, photographer, essayist, filmmaker, and the author of a number critically neglected short stories that have been described as gensō dōwa—fantastic fairy tales. In addition to exploring Japanese folktales and legends, Terayama appropriated themes and motifs from the European fairy-tale canon. In 1979 he not only premièred his play Aohigekō no shiro (Duke Bluebeard’s Castle) but also published two collections of fairy tales. The first of these, Boku ga ōkami datta koro: sakasama dōwa shi (When I Was a Wolf: Topsy-Turvy Fairy Tales), is a collection of classic fairy tales and other canonical works that he “tests” by taking them apart and, as the subtitle suggests, turning them inside out and upside down before reconstructing them in his own inimitable style. “Akazukin”—translated here as “Red Riding Hood”—is taken from this collection and is the first of Terayama’s topsy-turvy fairy tales to be translated into English.

Can Stage Directors Make Opera and Popular Culture ‘Equal’?

Can Stage Directors Make Opera and Popular Culture ‘Equal’?

“Life is a woman”: Gender, sex and sexuality in Bartók's The Wooden Prince

Abstract This paper is a reassessment of Béla Bartók's The Wooden Prince, in light of the attitudes and beliefs of Bartók's contemporaries, in particular György Lukács, and the Ballet's librettist, Béla Balázs. Particular emphasis is given to Lukács's relationship with Irma Seidler and Balázs through examination of Lukács's essay, “Søren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen” — a source overlooked in previous studies of this work. After analysing the views of Bartók's milieu regarding love and relationships, I conclude that the ballet's message is much more pessimistic than previously thought. This study places The Wooden Prince, which has been compared unfavourably with Bartók's other two stage works, alongside Duke Bluebeard's Castle as its companion in both musical and intellectual depth, and confirms Kodály's view that the ballet is the Allegro which balances the “desolate Adagio of the opera.”

The Haunting of Bluebeard: While Listening to a Recording of Béla Bartók's Opera "Duke Bluebeard's Castle"

The Haunting of Bluebeard: While Listening to a Recording of Béla Bartók's Opera "Duke Bluebeard's Castle"

The Haunting of Bluebeard—While Listening to a Recording of Béla Bartók's Opera “Duke Bluebeard's Castle”

A tall dark-haired man sits at a black, desklike, rolling cart in the center of a large empty room. Paint chips off the white walls, and dead autumn leaves cover the floor. The man is clean shaven and wears a black overcoat and black pants, but no shoes. Without speaking, he plays a tape recording of the overture to Béla Bartók's opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle (Herzog Blaubart's Burg). As the music begins, he rises and stands over a small dark-haired woman in a red dress, who lies on her back among the leaves, her arms stretched upward as if simultaneously reaching and waiting for something. The man hurls himself on top of her, and she drags his heavy body across the floor, her effort clearing a path through the leaves. As the overture becomes louder, the man rises and stops the tape player, rewinds it, and begins again, returning to his curled position on top of the woman's body. She drags him toward the chair, and as the music reaches the opening line, the man's efforts to stop, rewind, and fall onto her become more frantic. Suddenly he stands, lifting the tiny woman onto her feet and embraces her. Her hand creeps from under his arms and up his torso, inquisitively searching the surface of his chest, neck, and finally his face.

A song that will not die: Shifting symbolism in the interpretation of two sanguineous operas

Bart?k's well-known opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle has an internationally hardly known parallel in Willem Pijper's opera Halewijn. The Hungarian and the Dutch opera share the same motives; they make use of a historical, a literary and a musical heritage, both from eastern and western Europe, in different ways yet with remarkable similarities. This article is an investigation into the backgrounds of the two operas and into the contexts in which their motives developed - and continue to develop.

A Comparative Analysis of Text and Music and Gender and Audience in Duke Bluebeard's Castle

Andrea Fábry discusses in her article, "A Comparative Analysis of Text and Music and Gender and Audience in Duke Bluebeard's Castle," the image of Bluebeard as a metaphor for gender relations. Béla Bartók's opera and its libretto represent a prime example of the metaphor that in turn can be found in a range of text types, from fairy tales through novels to films. In the article, Fábry analyzes Bartók's contribution to the metaphor, namely with his opera, Duke Bluebeard's Castle. She relates the opera to the text of the opera's libretto, written by film theoretician Béla Balázs, and places her analysis in the larger historical framework of audience research in modernity. The analysis reveals that in a pronounced misogynistic artistic climate of the time and working from a libretto whose tragic ending denies transcendence to the female character of the opera, Bartók's opera can be understood as the representation of simplistic domesticity where the real story remains un-mediated and un-narrated.

Bela Balazs: The Physiognomy of Things

Born in 1884 in the Hungarian city of Szeged both parents were teachers, his real name was Herbert Bauer Baltzs was to surface in the most diverse contexts and occupations: as a prose writer; as the librettist for Bdla Bartok's opera, Duke Bluebeard's Castle; as a friend of the young Lukatcs; as an activist in the Hungarian Council Republic; as a film critic for Viennese and Berlin newspapers; and finally even as a script writer whose products may not always have met the critical standards of the former. In short, Balatzs, like Kracauer, was a rather typical representative of the European intelligentsia of the first third of this century an allround educated personality without steady income.

Data on the Genesis of Duke Bluebeard's Castle

Data on the Genesis of Duke Bluebeard's Castle

Duke Bluebeard's Castle

Duke Bluebeard's Castle