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Duke Bluebeard’s Castle
by Béla Bartók
And
Erwartung
by Arnold Schoenberg
Conductor: Alexander Platt
Director: Ken Cazan
Production Designer: Peter Harrison
Lighting Designer: Adam Silverman
At The Harris Theater for Music and Dance
205 E Randolph Drive
Call 312.704.8414, tickets: $35-$120
May 13, 15, 17, 19 at 7:30 pm
Running time is approximately 2 hours
Terrific voices featured at Harris Theatre
If you saw the first opera of Chicago Opera Theater’s current season, The Return of Ulysses, you would have seen a twenty-person cast successfully sharing the burden of capturing the audience’s attention and imagination. In the new double bill of Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung and Béla Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, you will be amazed at the ability of the one or two singers to accomplish the same task.
These two operas have grown over the course of the twentieth century to be paired together quite often, and for good reason: they are both from the intensely transitional period after Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams but before the first World War; they both deal more with the characters’ psyches than with plot; and, importantly, they are each less than an hour. It may be considered by some a clichéd pairing, but in the case of these two pillars of the operatic tradition, it is too a perfect match to do it otherwise.
The performance opens with Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, starring world-renown bass Samuel Ramey and mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó. Bartók’s only opera is based on the fairy tale of Bluebeard, a story of a wealthy nobleman who is rumored to have married three times, but the wives are nowhere to be found. Bartók’s version uses this as the framework but focuses on the fourth and final wife and her exploration of the castle. Duke Bluebeard is not willing to unlock the seven doors that hide his secrets, but through persistent prodding, the young wife is able to obtain the keys.
Bartók and his librettist Béla Balázs saw the potential to use the fairy tale to express Freud’s exploration of the subconscious mind. Very little actually happens in the opera, so the drama revolves around the psychological states of the characters as the young wife pries open the dark secrets of the old Duke. These states are communicated in large part by the orchestra, a force traditionally relegated to the distant background, but in Bartók’s hands its presence is always felt, sometimes overpowering the singers. Alexander Platt’s orchestra performs its role beautifully, and I would not change a thing even if it meant that I could hear every Hungarian word.
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Schoenberg’s Erwartung, the second act, is intended to depict a single second of psychological intensity as a woman searches for her missing lover. In this case, there is just one singing role played superbly by Nancy Gustafson. The woman’s situation is likely very familiar to audience members, and her reaction to this situation seems to flow directly from some deep well of unbalanced emotions. Schoenberg’s score is not in the infamous atonal dodecaphonic style that causes people to run and hide; it is pantonal, meaning that it moves freely through key centers to heighten the drama, using melodic motives to tie it all together.
In both operas lighting and set design work together flawlessly to frame the characters’ fragile mental states.
Both composers felt a need to use the orchestra to not merely support the singing but to depict the interior lives of the characters. Music cannot speak in concretes like language purports to do, but it can paint a possibly more accurate picture of our subtle and ineffable inner lives. These two operas, then, become so much more than just words and music; there is so much depth that it is probably impossible or extremely difficult for the first-time listener to take it all in. That is not, however, an excuse for not going. These operas are two of the most important and certainly influential operas of the twentieth century, and they reflect the early stages of our interest in our complex psychology. They are must-see operas, and these stunning performances will leave an impact whether you have not yet seen them or have seen them a dozen times.
Highly Recommended
Evan Kuchar
Date Reviewed: May 9, 2007
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