Béla Bartók at the Teatro Real, between a disturbing ballet and an opera without psychological tension | Culture

“The curtain rises on our eyelids: / Where is the stage, inside or outside, / ladies and gentlemen?” In these verses from the prologue of Bluebeard’s Castlerecited in Hungarian and often suppressed, condenses the symbolist key of Béla Bartók’s scenic diptych conceived by the manager Christof Loy. This co-production, successfully premiered at the Basel Opera in 2022, was received with some boos last Sunday, November 2 at the Teatro Real.

The pairing of the Hungarian composer’s only opera, written in 1911, with his ballet The wonderful mandarincomposed between 1918 and 1919 and completed five years later, is not new. It is worth remembering that the controversial premiere of this dance pantomime, held in Cologne in 1926 and censored after its third performance by the then mayor Konrad Adenauer due to its violent and explicit sexual content, was preceded on that occasion by Bluebeard’s Castle.

The present double program dedicated to Bartók has several recent antecedents, even in the inverted chronological order (Mandarin/Barbazul), How to propose loy, option is already adapt to the marleau and séphanie jasmine in Ginebra (2007), so as per jo kanamori in fencen (2012).

The novelty introduced by the German stage director, based in Madrid, lies in the interconnection of both works under the motto Love cannot be defeated by death.

For Loy, there is no sentimental failure, neither at the end of the ballet with the death of the Mandarin, nor at the close of the opera, where the emotional conflict between Judith and Bluebeard plunges into darkness. To reverse the first, he adopts an interesting license as an epilogue to the ballet, which he titles Resurrectionin which the Mandarin comes to life to dance a pas de deux with the Girl to the sound of twilight after fleeing that opens the orchestral composition Music for strings, percussion and celestawritten by Bartók in 1936.

The other license consists of using the aforementioned prologue on two occasions: as an introduction to both the ballet and the opera.

“This is a very beautiful text that reflects on the meaning of theater. It addresses the relationship between what is represented on stage and the public’s perception, emphasizing that many elements must retain their enigmatic and ambiguous character,” explains Loy in an interview included in the Basel program.

The stage director has returned to maximum austerity in a staging accompanied by intensely disturbing music, as he already did with Lulu de Berg and 2009.

Márton Ágh’s minimalist set design—reduced, in the ballet, to several wooden cabins without windows or doors, raised on stilts, along with a rickety telephone booth and a filthy mattress surrounded by garbage—sinks into the opera as a reflection of the passage of time.

Barbara Drosihn’s costumes follow the same austere line in the opera, in contrast to greater color in the ballet, while Thomas Kleinstück’s lighting affects the action with extreme discretion.

Loy conducts The wonderful mandarin as if it were an opera, in which the dancers could start singing at any moment. The powerful duo formed by Gorka Culebras, as the Mandarin, and Carla Pérez Mora, as the Girl, stands out, who elevate the epilogue to the rhythm of Music for strings, percussion and celesta.

The corporal action merges with the music without skimping on moments of extreme violence, although it blurs key elements of the pantomime, such as the three seductions of the Girl, the three assassination attempts of the Mandarin and his first appearance.

But in Bluebeard’s Castlethings don’t work as efficiently. After the repetition of the prologue – now located in its usual place – by the actor Nicolas Franciscus, who also participates in the ballet as the Poet, the action leads to a frustrating wedding night in which Judith explores every corner of Bluebeard’s soul until she discovers blood stains.

However, the audience must imagine both the blood and each key and each door. The couple lacks the necessary chemistry to sustain the stage tension during the 60 minutes that the opera lasts, which leads to a house clos with little psychological introspection.

On a vocal level, bassist Christof Fischesser, who had already performed an unforgettable La Roche at the Teatro Real in Whim by Strauss, embodied a solid and brilliant Bluebeard. The German singer showed impeccable clarity in the bass, great power in the high register, mastery of the speaking stolen and special care in the lyrical passages of the score.

For her part, soprano Evelyn Herlitzius, currently focused on roles of mezzo-sopranooffered a harsh and dramatic Judith, but without lyrical concessions. However, he demonstrated his experience by prevailing over an immense orchestra, despite a vibrato marking and certain limitations at the extremes of its range.

The great winner of the night was the conductor Gustavo Gimeno, who was facing his first production as the new owner of the Teatro Real. The Valencian master shone by materializing what Judith Frigyesi has called the “Bartók synthesis”: a renovating modernism, deeply rooted in popular tradition, which the composer elevated to an organic and universal dimension.

Although it did not reach the same degree of orchestral involvement shown in The angel of fire two seasons ago, Gimeno firmly led the complex rhythmic architecture of The wonderful mandarinmaintaining a fluid and precise tempo, with brilliant solo interventions, especially in the woodwind section, where clarinetist Luis Miguel Méndez stood out in the seduction passages.

Furthermore, he did not shy away from taking risks, as evidenced in the chase scene, where he pushed the orchestra to the limits of its capabilities. He also knew how to clearly trace the arc of the first movement of Music for strings, percussion and celesta.

But the orchestra’s brightest musical moments came after the break, with Bluebeard’s Castle. Gimeno masterfully handled the dramatic arc of the opera around the seven doors and the minor seconds that symbolize blood. He gave the score color, contrasts and transitions, without neglecting the balance with the voices. He demonstrated this especially in the climatic fifth gate, with an impressive everyone in C major representing the vast kingdom of Bluebeard, but also in the insistent glisndi arpeggios of harp, celesta, flute and clarinet, in the sixth door, which evoke the lake of tears.

In any case, the virtues of Bartók’s wonderful music, which has arrived on the stage of the Teatro Real for the first time, have not been enough to fill the hall, to the point that the last performance has been cancelled. We will have to take it with the same existential irony of the poet Ángel González and his famous poem “I am barts of everything…” Even so, until the 10th it will resonate “bela throughout barts” at the Teatro Real.