Bluebeard S Castle

Based on the Béla Bartók opera, Duke Bluebeard reluctantly and gradually uncovers the secrets of his psyche to his fourth wife, Judit, opening the seven doors of his castle to ultimately reveal his still living previous wives, among whom Judit must take her place.

Valery Gergiev conducts Mariusz Trelinski’s thrilling new production of these rarely heard one-act operas. Anna Netrebko stars as the blind princess of the title in Tchaikovsky’s lyrical work, opposite Piotr Beczala as Vaudémont, the man who wins her love—and wakes her desire to be able to see. Nadja Michael and Mikhail Petrenko are Judith and Bluebeard in Bartók’s gripping psychological thriller about a woman discovering her new husband’s murderous past.

Running through Bartók’s disenchanted tale, whose haunting music was initially condemned as unplayable, and the expression of despair in Poulenc’s monologue, the director Krzysztof Warlikowski perceives a shared dramatic thread, a shared feminine consciousness and a shared sense of imprisonment and suffocation: for the woman who penetrates the confines of Bluebeard’s castle and Elle, the woman who clings to a telephone conversation with a man as the only thing worth living for, are condemned to share the same fate. And this man she speaks to, does he really exist? Unless the director has interpreted Cocteau’s words to the letter and the telephone has become a “terrifying weapon that leaves no trace, makes no noise”…

Bartok's creepy and ravishing opera on film.

Judith arrives at Bluebeard's dark castle hoping her love can convince him to reveal the secrets behind the locked interior doors.

Bela Bartok's and Arnold Schoenberg's haunting excursions into the nightmare of the unconscious.

A visually stunning all-Hungarian production of Bartok's only opera, memorably led by Sir Georg Solti, one of the composer's greatest interpreters. The great Hungarian maestro, Sir Georg Solti, conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra in a film version of one of the great Hungarian masterpieces of the 20th century. An all-Hungarian cast, led by the celebrated soprano Sylvia Sass as Judith.