Duke Bluebeard's Castle Performing Arts, 2018. Opera, 60’

It is still cold and damp in Bluebeard's castle when the Duke leads his new wife Judith home. But Judith seems driven by an overwhelming will to leave everything familiar behind. With her love, she wants to illuminate the gloomy halls, to tear open the doors behind which Bluebeard's most magnificent and bloodthirsty secrets are hidden. "It's cool and sweet when the open wounds bleed," Bluebeard sighs wistfully, watching as the woman of his future slides into his deadly past. War, torture, treasures, lands - with each door open, the ominous castle - the third protagonist of the opera - moves a little further between the lovers. The installation artist Hans Op de Beeck lets us immerse ourselves in these mystical rooms of the Duke, where time is petrified and the future seems to have no place. In the center stands for him the endless question and answer game of the magnetised lovers, whose inner loneliness remains insurmountable. The nocturnal moments of silence are a recurrent theme in Op de Beeck's oeuvre. Light and shadow, dream and nightmare permeate his staged spaces, films or nocturnal watercolour studies, which accompany the season 18/19 of the Staatsoper iconographically. The age-old Bluebeard legend in an industrial castle, the former parcel post office, is an ideal constellation for him.
Composed by: Béla Bartók
Libretto by: Béla Balázs
Musical Direction: Titus Engel
Direction, Scenography and Costumes: Hans Op de Beeck
Dramaturgy: Barbara Eckle, Julia Schmitt
Cast:
Duke Bluebeard: Falk Struckmann
Judith: Claudia Mahnke
Music by the State Orchestra Stuttgart