Bluebeard’s Castle / La voix humaine
Béla Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle and Francis Poulenc's La voix humaine make up an intriguing double bill at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Both operas consist of just a single act and, together, they combine to form a programme that will delight fans of twentieth-century operatic traditions. Bluebeard's Castle is based on the French folk legend, while Poulenc's work took its inspiration from a drama for a lone actor of the same name by Jean Cocteau.
Bartók wrote the music to Bluebeard's Castle in 1911 to a libretto in Hungarian by his friend, the poet Béla Balázs. Balázs had originally come up with the idea for the opera's libretto for another composer, Zoltán Kodály, in 1908, but the work was unfinished. Bartók made some changes to his 1911 score the following year and an entirely new ending was later produced in 1917. Subsequently, the Royal Hungarian Opera House staged the opera's premiere on 24 May 1918.
The story centres on Bluebeard, a mediaeval prince, and his wife, Judith. A bard explains that Judith has resolved to follow her husband into his mysterious and intimidating castle. Afterwards, only Bluebeard and Judith are heard in the opera, typically singing their words in a pentatonic scale so well known to Bartók from Hungarian folk traditions. As the plot unfolds, Judith's curiosity about her husband drives her to open doors and ask questions about the castle. Will this lead to her untimely demise and what secret does Bluebeard's home keep hidden? These questions, and others, are answered as Judith gains access to seven of the castle's doors in a bid to reveal what lies behind them.
Jean Cocteau conceived La voix humaine as a monodrama, a stage play with a single protagonist. In it, a woman is seen on the phone to her lover and we soon discover that he may be at the home of his new girlfriend, even though the audience cannot hear what is said on the other end of the line. Poulenc had known Cocteau for years but did not rush into adapting his play into an opera, leaving it almost two decades before he felt he had acquired sufficient experience to do the work justice. Initially, he scored it for a soprano and a piano accompanist only but later developed the work into a full orchestration suitable for staging. The operatic version of La voix humaine - or The Human Voice, in English - went on to be first performed on 6 February 1959 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.
With sparse characters and highly focussed plots, these two operas work well together and the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino constitutes the ideal venue to witness them being staged.