Two people are happy, the third one dies

Who can truly fathom the depths of the human soul and psyche? Even two lovers who treat each other with the utmost openness—and therefore think they know one another—are confronted every day, indeed, often every hour, with new insights into their partner’s inner world: Behind the apparent facade of the familiar, one discovers the unexpected, fascinating, astonishing—and occasionally also frightening, repulsive. And that is exactly what the two one-hour operas are about, which will be performed on October 3 October as part of the first new State Opera production of the current season. In both of these chamber-opera-style works (which haven’t been performed at this theater for decades), both in Alexander Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy and in Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, the focus is on a couple who, consciously or unconsciously, descends into the depths and final dark recesses of their shared relationship.

In Zemlinsky’swork, this culminates in the brutal murder of Bianca’s lover by her husband Simone, who has become jealous, and this, in turn,signals a new beginning in love—Bianca: “Why didn’t you tell me that you’re so strong?” new beginning of love—Bianca: “Why didn’t you tell me that you were so strong?” Simone: “Why didn’t you tell me you were so beautiful!” In Bartók’s work, however, the opening of the seven locked doors of a dark, seemingly impregnable castle symbolizes the exploration of the secret spiritual abysses

Vasily Barkhatov—he is one of today’s most sought-after directors and stages productions at venues such as La Scala in Milan, the Bavarian State Opera, the Bayreuth Festival, in Lyon, and at the Theater an der Wien —had been thinking intensively about staging Bluebeard ever since his college days. While conducting research on Oscar Wilde, he came across Wilde’s A Florentine Tragedy a little later and, subsequently, Alexander Zemlinsky’s musical setting of the drama fragmentby Alexander Zemlinsky. By then, at the very latest, the Bartók enthusiast had become just as big a Zemlinsky fan, and by then at the latest, he had the idea to combine the two pieces into a single evening around a continuous narrative had taken root in him. Years of reflection later, this idea is finally becoming a reality on the stage of the State Opera.

Vasily Barkhatov (the stress is on the first “a” of his last name) conceives of the evening as the story of a single couple, whose highly emotional relationship development and dynamics we, the audience, are invited to follow: In the first part, before intermission— *The Florentine Tragedy*—we are introduced to Bianca and Simone. Very briefly, in fast-forward, the orchestral prelude depicts the beginning of their marriage, the happiness they found in each other and in the elegant interior design business they founded together. But everyday life and routine soon caused their initial passion and joy to fade, and so the couple now finds itself at a dead end in their life together. To give the relationship one last chance, Bianca hires a psychotherapist. And he suggests a role-playing exercise—on the shop’s premises. “So the ‘Tenor’ in our story isn’t a secret lover of Bianca’s, but rather someone who comes to help get their relationship back on track,” says the director. As is so often the case in similar situations, the husband, Simone, finds this role-playing simply ridiculous and pointless and goes along with it only reluctantly.

However, without realizing it at first, he is drawn deeper and deeper into the events. Not least because, in this game, the therapist takes on the name Guido Bardi—one of Bianca’s actual former lovers— and in this way stirs up Simone’s jealousy to such an extent that everything spirals out of control. Finally, Simone snaps and kills the therapist. But it is precisely this relapse into the animalistic, this murder comparable to the fury of a Stone Age warrior, reignites Bianca’s former passion, and Simone, too, sees Bianca anew with eyes full of wonder. The therapist was thus successful, but pays for that success with his life. For the intermission between acts and behind the closed curtain, the production claims as the culmination of the two characters’ reunion, a cathartic sexual encounter between Bianca and Simone.

As the audience emerges from the sensory frenzy they have just experienced, Bartók’s piece begins after the intermission. In light of this extreme situation, in light of what has happened, the couple is now ready to finally lay all their cards on the table. And so they force themselves, as a couple, to work through all the earlier stages of their relationship once and for all. “For us, the seven locked doors don’t just focus on Bluebeard’s inner life alone.

On the contrary: they refer to the uncovering of jointly experienced traumas, the bringing to light of all repressed, mutually inflicted wounds,” Barkhatov explains his interpretation. While the director defines the first act as a thoroughly realistic event, the relationship between the two enters a semi-real, metaphysical realm of the unconscious. “The necessary process of symbolically opening the doors thereby takes on nightmarish traits. But it is precisely this painful—for both—forcing our way through this shared past that heals what has been in the very moment they face it.”

By the end of the play, the couple will find themselves on a new level of relationship—one that is sustainable in the long term. Bluebeard’s final line—“And from now on, it will be night forever…”—is thus not to be understood in the usual, hopelessand disillusioned sense, but rather as a positive definition of the new status quo.

“This is probably the first time in the history of the reception of Bluebeard, that the opera ends with a happy ending,” Barkhatov muses aloud. “But even from a musical perspective, there’s nothing to contradict this interpretation, for the orchestral postlude does not foreshadow anything tragic, but rather something deeply comforting. So we see a contented couple going to bed together after a long day.

And that, too, is one of the takeaways from this evening: that those who believe one cannot build one’s own happiness on the misfortune of others are mistaken. Our pair of protagonists even builds their happiness on the death of a third person. And this third person is simply shoved under the bed …”