Bluebeard’s Castle: The Birth of Cinema from the Spirit of Opera
Bluebeard’s Castle: The Birth of Cinema from the Spirit of Opera

Summary/Abstract: Béla Bartók’s one act opera, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (A kékszakállú herceg vára), breaks with precedent. Before the curtain rises, even before the music begins, the ancient figure of a Prologue appears and speaks the opening text of Béla Balázs’s libretto. Why is he there? What do his words mean? All too often, opera productions, recordings, academic discussions, even the one video, avoid these questions by omitting the Prologue entirely. Perhaps worse, the published German version of the libretto by Wilhelm Ziegler—based on Emma Kodály’s first translation— imputes specific meaning to phrases left vague in the Hungarian. Similarly flawed, the English translation attempts to retain the poetic and rhythmic features of the Hungarian at the expense of rendering a literal equivalent. Even recent scholarship (e.g. Frigyesi and Leafstedt) misrepresents the text, despite the declared intent to be literal.[...]

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