The Seven Doors – on Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle

Béla Bartók (1881–1945), composer of Bluebeard’s Castle. Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

There is one opera Vegard Nilsen says he carries with him in a particular way. In his latest essay, the artistic director reads Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle — the only opera the composer completed — as seven doors opening into a single human being. Judith wants to know Bluebeard wholly, to let light into every locked room; but the essay asks where knowing another person turns into wanting to possess them. The orchestra, Nilsen writes, is the castle itself, which is why the conductor must lead rather than follow. On the fifth door’s blazing C major, the three living wives behind the seventh, and the darkness the work begins and ends in.