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Opera San Jose
Bartok: Bluebeard’s Castle
February 15, 2025
Seeing Bartok’s 1918 one-act is not just a rare opportunity, it’s a mesmerizing one. It would be difficult to experience this work without having the furniture in one’s mind fully rearranged.
Taken from a French legend told by Charles Perrault, Bela Belazs’s libretto carries a fairly discursive pattern. In her desire to marry the mysterious bad boy next door, Judith (Maria Natale) comes to his castle and is led through a series of seven doors, each revealing an aspect of its owner’s life, the last of these completely verboten.
The unsettling mood is set up immediately by Steven C. Kemp’s gorgeous gothic set, two high stone walls outfitted with doors of different shapes and colors and an array of grand mismatched chandeliers. The seventh door stands at the top of a set of stairs, carved and golden.
Bluebeard himself (Zachary Nelson) opens with a spoken prologue, which in itself is an unsettling opening for an audience primed for singing. Our heroine arrives in a sexy sheer bridal outfit that looks a little Taylor Swiftian (Caitlin Cisek, costume designer).
The riddles begin, and one by one the doors are opened: a torture chamber, a store of bloody weaponry. A fairly creepy beginning, but it’s also hard to decipher the back-and-forth between bride and groom. Is this foreplay, or is this a cat playing with a mouse before killing it?
This perilous little tennis match is represented in the music, as well. Bluebeard, often seated, sings plainy and in the pentatonic mode, often repeating the phrase “Are you frightened?” Judith moves restlessly about the chamber as she quizzes her suitor, singing in richer modalities inspired by Debussy. She also applies trickier rhythms, triplets and shifting signatures taken from Transylvanian folk music.
Joseph Marcheso and his orchestra do an amazing job of delivering this demanding score. The proceedings reach a grand climax with the revelation of Bluebeard’s expansive landholdings, represented by a burst into C major and the sublime rumbling of the California Theater’s Wurlitzer organ, played by Veronika Agranov-Dafoe.
Nelson sings Bluebeard with a calm presence and a rich baritone, providing the possibility for both menace and kindness. Soprano Natale does a superb job of exploring Judith’s emotions, giving the tale its necessary dramatic throughline.
Stage director Shawna Lucey leans into the story’s feminist implications, underlining the power plays between authoritarian male and disadvantaged female - but I would add a further interpretation. Judith is horrified at the violence revealed by the first two doors, but her disgust lessens as she sees the gold, gardens and lands that came as a result. And there’s your modern oligarchy.
Lighting designer Michael Clark achieved some innovative effects with the door openings, particularly the shimmering of Bluebeard’s treasures. There’s a bit of license taken with the ending, but the change is actually much closer to Perrault’s original story.
Through March 2, California Theater, 345 S. First Street, San Jose. $58-$215, operasj.org, 408/437-4450. In English with English and Spanish supertitles.
Michael J. Vaughn is a 40-year opera critic and author of thirty novels, including his latest, I Look for You in the Crowd, available at Amazon.com.
