Béla Bartók - Hertog Blauwbaards burcht

The fortress of Duke Bluebeard has no windows; the walls weep. The building sighs, breathes and groans like a living body. From the very first bars of Bartók’s enigmatic opera, the hidden begins to push its way to the surface. Judith refuses to be stopped and searches on. Is she merely a curious wife? Or is she the mirror of Bluebeard’s wounded subconscious? Or even of Béla Bartók himself?

Bluebeard’s Castle, Bartók’s only opera, is far darker and more fractured than the fairy tale “Bluebeard” recorded by Charles Perrault in the 17th century. In the original story, a young woman receives the keys to her husband’s castle. She may open every door except one. When she does so anyway, Bluebeard threatens to kill her, just as he did her predecessors — until her brothers arrive just in time to save her.

In Bartók’s version, there is no comforting moral, no deus ex machina — only a tense, fragile confrontation between two people who love and repel each other at the same time. The score uses an almost expressionist texture rooted in traditional Hungarian music. The vocal lines lean closer to the impressionism of Claude Debussy; they embrace spoken language and capture breath, vibration, doubt. At the centre stands Bluebeard: not a caricatured monster, but a man in love — generous, vulnerable. He warns her. He almost begs. He draws a boundary, the boundary beyond which danger begins: for Judith, for the couple, and thus for himself. Yet Judith continues. One door. Then another.

In this ensemble adaptation by Siebe Thijs, accompanied by a video performance by Lise Bruyneel, we are no longer distant spectators. We follow Judith live as she descends into the castle. We climb the stairs with her, feel her hesitation, her tension, her stubborn resolve. With every door she opens, the image explodes, the music shifts, the space unfolds into unexpected worlds — flamboyant, dizzying — before closing again. The further Judith goes, the greater the doubt becomes. Does the castle even exist? Or is it the inner architecture of a tormented mind?

When Judith finally plunges into “a night strewn with stars,” we no longer know whether we are witnessing a vision or a cataclysm. Sighing, lamentation — these are recurring motifs in Bartók’s opera. At the request of Oxalys, composer‑arranger Siebe Thijs wrote a short pre‑overture, a chamber‑musical pendant in which he analyses the sigh motif and places it in a conceptual context.

In collaboration with Wilde Westen & Conservatorium Kortrijk.