Salonen, CSO deliver the brilliance and strange of “Bluebeard’s Castle”
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s belated opening concerts of 2025 are marking the 80th anniversary of Béla Bartók’s passing. In the first program of his two-week CSO residency, Esa-Pekka Salonen led a bracing, startlingly fresh performance of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra (heard Tuesday night).
Thursday evening’s program segued from the Hungarian composer’s most popular score to one of his oddest and least frequently performed works with Bartók’s opera, Bluebeard’s Castle.
Adapted from a one-act mystery play by Béla Balázs, the opera (also known as Duke Bluebeard’s Castle) premiered in Budapest in 1918 yet Bartók continued to revise Bluebeard through the 1930s.
The one-act opera is a two-character work with Duke Bluebeard bringing his new wife Judith to the mysterious title abode. Bluebeard gives the loving but wary woman the opportunity to leave but she is intrigued by the windowless castle, which is dominated by seven massive locked doors. Judith insists that Bluebeard permit her to open each door, which they argue about before he relents.
The locked doors reveal a bloody torture chamber, an arsenal, and a room of glittering treasures. Judith is repelled yet increasingly intrigued as each door is opened. Bluebeard reluctantly allows Judith to open the final door, a chamber which contains his previous three wives, still very much alive. The conflicted Judith is both frightened and fascinated by the women, eventually joining her predecessors behind the seventh door, which closes behind her as Bluebeard is left in darkness.
The symbolist influence that is manifest in Pelléas et Mélisande is also palpable here (Salonen led an unforgettable performance of Debussy’s opera with the CSO a decade ago.) While Bartók’s idiom is wholly different, both operas are imbued with a similar atmosphere of gloomy foreboding and existential dread.
Bluebeard’s Castle remains one of Bartók’s richest and most remarkable scores. Thursday night’s performance was not perfect with some less successful elements. But on the whole, it gave sterling and brilliant advocacy to Bartók’s only opera, and one walked out of the hall convinced that Bluebeard is the composer’s masterpiece.
The ever-reliable Christian Van Horn proved ideal as the title polygamist weirdo. His bass-baritone has both resonant warmth and a quasi-Slavic timbre wholly suited to Bartók’s music. Van Horn’s natural vocal authority encompassed the character’s malevolent power and lurking danger yet the towering singer also conveyed Bluebeard’s vulnerability and genuine love for the ill-fated Judith.
As Bluebeard’s latest concubine/victim, Ekaterina Gubanova was heard to better advantage Thursday night than in her last local opera appearance in the title role of Lyric’s hapless Carmen of 2015. Still the Russian mezzo’s performance as Judith provided rather mixed rewards.
In the early going, her soft-focus mezzo was underpowered and seemed to fade away in the lower range. As Judith became more assertive—and her music higher—Gubanova’s performance improved and she brought a sense of culminating tragedy to the final scene, yet without quite etching the essential conflicted nature of the character. While the role is sanctioned for mezzo or soprano, Judith’s music seems to cry out for a higher voice to more effectively soar over the massive orchestra.
The slight but dubious editing of the text in the closing moments of the performance didn’t help. In addition to making the action of the ending murky, it created a didactic “man as oppressor, woman as victim” coda, subverting and oversimplifying Bartók’s more subtly layered and ambiguous finale.
Actor Breezy Leigh’s declamatory, hectoring reading of the brief Prologue seemed better suited to a CTU rally than setting the scene for a Hungarian mystery opera. If anything, the unsubtle narration made a stronger case for omitting the spoken introduction, as many performances do.
Those debits apart, the performance of the orchestra under Salonen’s alert direction was magnificent across all sections. Scored for huge forces, there is a richness, luminosity, and variety of colors and timbres in this 59-minute score that never cease to amaze. Such moments as the majestic gloom of the opening scenes, the martial music for the armory, the sunlit lyricism of Bluebeard’s garden, and the pentatonic surging romanticism of the sort-of love music all made vivid and compelling impact.
The lighting design by Keith Parham was almost a third principal character. Aided by illuminated color-shifting panels spread across the terrace, Parham’s lighting closely reflected the unfolding narrative and mystery behind each of the seven doors, from beginning and ending in total darkness to the blood red of the torture chamber and brilliant high beams for Bluebeard’s realm.
Even with reservations, this was a roiling and powerful performance of an extraordinary opera and one that is not likely to be heard again anytime soon, so grab the opportunity this weekend.
The evening led off, somewhat incongruously, with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2.
Salonen led a spirited performance, with a fleet pace and winds to the fore in the modern manner. His quickish tempo for the Larghetto could have let the slow movement breathe more but lent a graceful, Mozartean quality. Following a vigorous Scherzo, Salonen leapt attacca into the back-flip theme of the finale, where the energetic playing of the orchestra rounded off the performance in worthy style.
The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. cso.org
Posted in Performances
3 Responses to “Salonen, CSO deliver the brilliance and strange of “Bluebeard’s Castle””
Leave a Comment
Subscribe via RSS.
Posted Feb 08, 2025 at 1:19 pm by Peter Borich
Simply wonderful. A masterpiece with a performance worthy of its stature.
A jaw-dropping fifth door which I shall never forget.
Posted Feb 09, 2025 at 11:02 am by Jeff R
Saturday’s performance was fabulous. The crowd was very enthusiastic at the conclusion.
They should have totally dropped the narration; in my opinion that’s the only thing that did not work.
It is a shame that the CSO couldn’t have hired Salonen as our new MD. That said, I suppose his modernist tastes would not have worked with the board. I suspect he also would not have been interested.
Hopefully he will continue to come for two-week visits in the future.
Posted Feb 09, 2025 at 1:15 pm by Mark
I agree with your points all around.
I only had two additional thoughts: 1. The lighting was largely successful EXCEPT for the flagrant cue with opening of Door 5, which distracted from Judith’s high C.
Additionally, I thought it would have been an easy win to bring his three previous wives through the three doors of the terrace. Would have been effectively menacing.