Bart?k: Bluebeard's Castle [DVD Video]
![Bart?k: Bluebeard's Castle [DVD Video]](/images/Bart-k-Bluebeard-Castle-DVD-Video-B0011WMWWU-L.jpg)
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DVD Cover Information
Composer: Bela BartokConductor: Georg Solti
Orchestra: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vocals: Kolos Kovats
Vocals: Sylvia Sass
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language); Chinese (Subtitled); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Classical, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 56 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-05-13
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Decca
Movie Reviews of Bart?k: Bluebeard's Castle [DVD Video]
Movie Review: The Missing Music Box from Dr Caligari's Cabinet
Summary: 5 Stars
Mike Birman's excellent review of this rare expressionist opera, several moths old already, was responsible for my ordering it. A few nights ago I finally watched it. His judgment of the music says everything I might want to say. The cinematography is another matter.
Of course, with Georg Solti conducting, I knew I was getting a production with some miles on its chassis. I knew it had to be a re-release or else a filming that had been kept in the vaults. In fact, the performance was filmed in 1981. Hey, I remember 1981! There were no cell-phones or iPods in 1981, but people had stopped wearing animal skins in favor of clothes, and most Americans had indoor plumbing. It wasn't so long ago. Imagine my surprise then, when Bluebeard's Castle began flickering in grainy colorization on my HDTV screen, looking very much like a Fritz Lang silent from about 1925, yet with rich, realistic orchestral colors and 'immediate' singing! I quickly checked the box, to see if I'd read the wrong date. No, 1981! Aha, perhaps it was filmed in a castle in Transylvania, I thought! Everything, however, points to a television studio in Hungary.
Bluebeard is a short opera, just over an hour, with only two characters -- Bluebeard sung by Kolos Kovats and Judith sung by Sylvia Sass. Both singers look their parts, and one has plenty of opportunity to study their faces in such a filming. Kovats moves and stands - mostly stands - like Dr. Mabuse in one of those early horror films. One keeps expecting the celluloid to flicker and break, and the house lights to come on, embarrassing the neckers in the back rows. Sass is Theda Bara incarnate. The sets - dungeons and damp-rot in the vaults of the castle - are at the same time brooding and kitschy, and when the seven doors start flying open, well... if Alien II had been an opera sung in Hungarian and filmed by John Lurie and the crew from Stranger Than Paradise...
I confess, the first few minutes of this DVD I thought I'd been bamboozled. But then it caught me. Then I recognized the perhaps unintended brilliance of staging this 1911 opera in the cinematographic language closest to its spirit, to the out-of-kilter Freudian mood of decadent sensuality expressed in the music. I can't, in fact, imagine a better way to stage it. Anything more vivacious, anything less shadowy could never evoke such dream-like pre-modern anxiety. One of a kind in every way!
Summary of Bart?k: Bluebeard's Castle [DVD Video]
A visually stunning all-Hungarian production of Bart?k's only opera, memorably led by Sir Georg Solti, one of the composer's greatest interpreters. Previously released on Decca LD and VHS.B?la Bart?k's sole opera, Bluebeard's Castle, is a masterpiece well-served by an all-Hungarian cast and conductor in this filmed studio version. It's a dark, brooding work peppered with dramatic moments; less a retelling of the Bluebeard legend than a journey into psychological depths and the impenetrability of the human soul. Bluebeard and his bride, Judith, arrive at his castle and as they enter the subterranean fortress whose walls sigh with tears, she notices seven locked doors and insists that Bluebeard give her the keys to unlock them. Reluctantly, he agrees. She opens the doors, one by one, to reveal a torture chamber, an armory, a room of treasures, a secret garden, his vast domains, a lake of tears, and, behind the seventh door, his former wives, frozen in immobility, whom she joins, consigned by Bluebeard to his past and his frozen soul. "All is darkness," he says, and the orchestra fades away in Stygian gloom. The third character in the opera is the orchestra, commenting upon and describing the scenes in Debussy-influenced colors and imaginative scoring. The orchestral sighs, its stabbing figures delineate the "blood motif" that runs through the work, and when Judith opens the fifth door that reveals the glories of Bluebeard's kingdom, its radiant climax is one of modern opera's most thrilling moments. Sir Georg Solti was a great Bart?k conductor and his dynamic, idiomatic reading is a major asset of this production. His singers are excellent too. Sylvia Sass acts well as Judith, wheedling and imperiously demanding at turns, and if her top notes are shrill at times, her rich lower register more than compensates. She's costumed in a flowing mauve nightgown fringed in a darker purple, giving the impression of a bird in flight when she moves. Bass Kolos Kov?ts is a commanding Bluebeard, deep of voice, noble in demeanor, though somewhat stolid as an actor. He's costumed in an outfit more fitting for a B movie about alien planets, with a campy black leather outfit, a high collar framing his head.
Set designer G?bor Bachmann's gloomy castle is well portrayed. He lets us enter each of the secret rooms with variable results; the shining treasury and the garden come off well, the vast kingdom is anything but vast or even impressive. Director Mikl?s Szinet?r does what he can to introduce movement to an inherently static opera, and having Sass portray all three of Bluebeard's former wives in the final scene is a neat touch. The prerecorded sound mix favors the singers to the detriment of orchestral detail, though enough shines through to leave us in awe at both Bart?k's genius and Solti's mastery. --Dan Davis
Bluebeard's Castle, is in 4:3 ratio. Sound options include PCM Stereo and DTS 5.1 Surround. Sung in Hungarian with subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish, and Chinese. No extras are included.
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