Béla Bartók - Duke Bluebeard's Castle / The Magnificent Mandarin
La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2018
Alain Altinoglu, Christophe Coppens, Ante Jerkunica, Nora Gubisch, Gábor Vass, Vincent Clavaguera-Pratx, Merche Romero, Brigitta Skarpalezos, Dan Mussett, Norbert De Loecker, Amerigo Delli Bove, James Vu Anh Pham
La Monnaie Streaming - June 2018
When you read about the atrocities committed by the real-life inspiration for Bluebeard, it seems a little tasteless to make his story the subject of a fairy tale or an opera. Rather than focus on the horrors of what really took place in the castle of Gilles de Rais, the dark fairy tale story has become more of a cautionary tale on how a woman attempts to break down defensive barriers of masculine power and control in order to engage love and self-awareness but falls victim in the end to her own feminine weaknesses of curiosity and jealousy. That's one interpretation anyway, but there is a certain amount of ambiguity played with there as well as a sense of horror at what can lie in the darker recesses of the human psyche. Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle does actually explore that quite successfully.
It's a beautifully structured and concise piece, gifted with a score from Bartók that is precisely attuned to its moods and darkness, yet, it's not so precise that it can't also convey the ambiguity that allows it to work on a number of levels. That character is very much emphasised by the diabolically-intoned spoken-word introduction which leaves it open whether what take place on the inside or the outside. Are we looking at Duke Bluebeard's Castle as a place of horror or do the seven locked rooms of the castle rather a symbolical representation of the inner life of Duke Bluebeard?
The latter, the symbolical and the allegorical, is very much to the fore in La Monnaie's production directed by Christophe Coppens, the former artist and fashion designer who has returned to his theatrical roots and who was first involved with opera in La Monnaie's version of Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen, (which they retitled 'Foxie!'). The castle is a grid of nine rooms, with Bluebeard at its centre unable to move, unreachable, wrapped in the castle constrictor-like grip. Judit's appearance and fearless willingness to explore breaks down this barrier on the opening of the first chamber, but Bluebeard still remains confined to a wheelchair until he is finally freed. Freeing Bluebeard however might not be such a great idea.
The set design highlights that this freedom is one of breaking down barriers to self-awareness or self-reflection by making this a castle of mirrors. Every surface is mirrored, but angled and distorting. It's dark, cold blue, turning to red as Judit recognises that everything in each of the rooms is covered in blood. The chambers themselves are of course symbolic of what lies in the deeper recesses of the male psyche, bathed in violence, avarice and secrecy, closing down human feelings, hiding a lake of tears and sentiments of love in the seventh chamber. It's the idea that Bluebeard might harbour those feelings for other women that proves to be an open door that the woman can never close once she has become aware of it. Some things are better not knowing.
As a staging and representation Coppens' direction and designs are effective enough, if not really spectacular, daring or revealing of any new ideas or insights. It remains a fairly static production, with only Judit moving slowly between one room and the next. The lighting brings emphasis to the music, saving its big moment to chime with Bartók's grand theme for the opening of the fifth chamber. It's in the musical performance really that the work lives, and Alain Altinoglu finds that epic quality in the work, the dark fairy-tale and the dark allegory. It's a work for great singers too, and Ante Jerkunica and Nora Gubisch bring out its chilling stridency.
What is good about the production however is that it doesn't just view the partnering piece as an entirely separate work, but uses Bartók's The Magnificent Mandarin - composed in 1924 - to also to highlight and add further commentary on Bartók's short 1918 opera - his only one - Duke Bluebeard's Castle. It's a welcome change for seeing Duke Bluebeard's Castle paired with another short one-act opera like Iolanta or La Voix Humaine, and even as a ballet-pantomime, The Magnificent Mandarin is a much more complementary piece than you would first imagine, and perhaps even allows both works to gain something in the pairing.
If Duke Bluebeard's Castle is all symbolism of suppressed and internalised emotions, repressed sexual desire and violence, those characteristics are made explicit to some extent in The Magnificent Mandarin, where an unscrupulous brothel manager assaults and robs clients and pays for his crimes when he murders a Chinese Mandarin. Coppens accordingly revisits the dark chambers of the castle as the colourful and brightly lit rooms of a brothel, where we can voyeuristically see those behaviours carried out in the Technicolor style of Hitchcock's Rear Window. This might perhaps account for Bluebeard appearing again at the conclusion in his wheelchair, as otherwise there's no direct overlapping or reference between the two parts of this production.
I say explicit, but it's actually highly stylised, very much in the cartoon come to life quality that Coppens used in Foxie! The Cunning Little Vixen. That doesn't mean however that it can't get across the intent of the piece, the sensuality and the violence that rises to the surface, and it's often quite clever and imaginative in the designs, such as one of the prostitutes wearing a skirt of legs that dissolve into a blur of body parts in her tryst with the Mandarin. Again it's Bartók's music that is highly expressive and it's matched much more precisely to the dancer's movements and actions, delivered with like precision and expression by Alain Altinoglu's conducting of the La Monnaie orchestra.
Links: La Monnaie
