10 Things to Know about BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE/ERWARTUNG

Although described by some critics as “far too dark” when it premiered in 1918, Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle proved an immediate success—and would go on to prove the perfect partner to Schoenberg’s highly concentrated and no less disturbing Erwartung.

Read on to learn more about these boundary-breaking works of musical modernism before booking your tickets to see this “diabolically astute pairing” (Toronto Star) when it returns to our stage in 2026.

Once upon a time...

Bartók’s only opera is based on a French folktale as told by Charles Perrault in his 1697 Histoires et contes du temps passé avec des moralités (Stories or Tales from Past Times, with Morals). Bluebeard entrusts his new wife with the keys to his mansion but forbids her to enter one chamber. There she discovers the remains of his former wives. When Bluebeard learns that his secret has been uncovered, he resolves to kill her—but she is rescued by her brothers, who kill Bluebeard instead.

Things get darker

Dedicated to Bartók’s first wife, Márta Ziegler (the couple divorced several years later, when the composer—now aged 42—went on to marry his 19 year-old piano student), Bluebeard’s Castle takes around an hour to perform and features only two characters, Bluebeard and Judith. In a departure from the original story, Bluebeard takes Judith through his castle, revealing the unsettling secrets behind several doors while insisting that she ask no questions. Judith’s pleas that he reveal all to her are met with the opening of the final door—through which she passes to join his previous wives.

Music that defies translation

Set to a Hungarian libretto by the poet Béla Balázs, the score is informed by the parlando rubato style (“flexible speech-rhythm”) that Bartók drew from Hungarian folk music. Hungarian-American musicologist Paul Henry Lang wrote that this is one reason Bluebeard’s Castle can’t be sung in translation, since “the foreign words’ rhythms and accents are constantly at odds with the music.”

The “blood” motif

Throughout Bluebeard’s Castle, keen listeners will note the recurrence of the dissonant minor second interval, which is used to evoke sadness, unease, and horror at different points in the opera. Since the minor second is employed whenever Judith notices blood in the castle, it has come to be known in this context as the “blood” motif.

Restoring agency

In 2020, the Bayerische Staatsoper presented Judith, in which the title character is a police detective who manages to free the imprisoned wives and kill Bluebeard. The production also featured a film designed to frame the narrative revisions, which was set to Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

A fitting counterpart

Schoenberg’s one-act monodrama, Erwartung (“Expectation”), is even shorter than Bluebeard’s Castle, taking just half an hour for solo soprano (The Woman) and orchestra to perform. Composed in 1909, it premiered in 1924, conducted by Schoenberg’s former counterpoint teacher, Alexander von Zemlinsky.

Into the woods

Rather than depicting literal events, Erwartung explores fears of the unknown as The Woman searches for his missing lover. Having steeled herself to enter a dark forest despite dreading getting lost, she mistakes a tree trunk for a corpse before emerging into a clearing. By the time she exits the forest, her hands are covered in blood and her dress is torn—and her discovery of her lover’s body in a nearby house offers neither comfort nor clear answers.

A monument of modernism

Musicologist Charles Rosen has described Erwartung—along with Berg’s Wozzeck and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring—as one of the “impregnable…great monuments of modernism”. Other important works by Schoenberg from this period that experimented with the absence of traditional keys include his Second String Quartet, Op. 10; his Five Orchestral Pieces; and the melodrama Pierrot lunaire.

And how does that make you feel?

Erwartung’s exploration of a woman’s subconscious fears touches on themes of horror, grief, and memory. Its librettist, Marie Pappenheim, was a graduate of medicine at the University of Vienna and a relative of Bertha Pappenheim, who was the subject of the first case study on hysteria—described by none other than the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

The perfect match

In 2015, The Globe and Mail asked revival director François Racine if The Woman is more akin to Judith or Bluebeard. "Definitely Bluebeard,” replied Racine. “Judith is obviously a victim, while The Woman possibly committed an act of violence herself. Both Bluebeard and The Woman are locked, spatially and mentally. Both avoid being conscious of something—in different ways. He is taciturn; she talks a lot but in fragments and around what is not being said. She's craving for the love that she's lost; Bluebeard doesn't want to dwell on his loves past or current because love makes him too vulnerable."