Word: bluebeards
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...York City Opera swung into its spring season last week with a double bill devoted to the psychological and the tactical aspects of love. Bela Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, a moody, Freudian opus (TIME, Oct. 13), came first. Then in a more frolicsome vein, came Ravel's L'Heure Espagnole, and its story of light-hearted Spanish intrigue. Apart from the tact that both operas were done thoroughly to the first-nighters' taste, the chief interest centered on the second conductor of the evening. After Company Director Joseph Rosenstock had conducted Bluebeard, he turned...
Before Freud, Bluebeard was a fairytale monster with a pleasantly chilling tendency toward murder. After Freud, Bluebeard's libido became a subject for reexamination. The late composer Bela Bartok and Librettist Bela Balasz were quick to see the possibilities, in 1911 put the theory into the form of a one-act opera, Bluebeard's Castle. It was staged for the first time in the U.S. last week by the New York City Opera...
Wife Judith, the fourth, enters the castle of Bluebeard's soul, is consumed with curiosity about the seven doors to his subconscious. She coaxes his keys from him, one by one opens the doors to discover 1) his torture chamber, 2) his armory, 3) his treasury, 4) his secret garden, 5) his broad domain, 6) his vale of tears and, finally, 7) his three previous wives, alive, but all in trancelike states...
Judith realizes then that her husband cannot be fulfilled by any one woman: his first wife was dewy-fresh like the morning; the second was ardent noon; the third was a twilight sorrower. Too late, she makes her final discovery: her curiosity has gone too far. Bluebeard hands her the mantle of night, and she joins the others behind the seventh door. Judith is sung by Soprano Ann Ayars; her "inner self" is danced simultaneously by Mary Hinkson. Bluebeard is sung by James Pease (his inner self is the castle). All this had the first-night audience sitting...
...just what they deserve," come out flatly against racial prejudice, boom such worthy sentiments as honor and service in good causes. Her sound-effects men developed some wonderful sizzling and steaming noises when boiling oil was poured over Ali Baba's 40 thieves hiding in jars. Bluebeard gets his just deserts, too, but only by implication: "The kids are tickled to death when Bluebeard's sword falls, klunk, closely followed by the thud of Bluebeard hitting the ground for the last time. They get the idea, but not the horror...