Sat. 1pm ET- Iolanta & Bluebeard’s Castle The Metropolitan Opera is offering a double bill of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle,” and Tchaikovsky’s one-act opera, “Iolanta,” Double bills of short operas are usually programmed according to musical affinity, WRUU – 107.5 is Savannah’s home for this radio tradition that goes back to 1931. 02/09/2019
Sat. 1pm ET- Iolanta & Bluebeard’s Castle The Metropolitan Opera is offering a double bill of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle,” above, and Tchaikovsky’s one-act opera, “Iolanta,” Double bills of short operas are usually programmed according to musical affinity,
Happy endings in opera are few and far between — especially for women. Outside of comic opera, it is rare for a heroine to survive the final act; the price for love is usually death. Tchaikovsky’s one-act opera, “Iolanta,” is an exception to this rule, a luscious setting of a fairy tale in which a blind princess finds love and the gift of sight.It may seem cruel, then, to follow “Iolanta” with a performance of “Bluebeard’s Castle,” Bartok’s chilling psycho-thriller about the annihilating power of love taken to obsessive extremes.
WRUU – 107.5 is Savannah’s home for this radio tradition that goes back to 1931.
Summary by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim
“Iolanta” tells the story of a princess, blind from birth, who is raised in isolation and kept unaware of her condition at her father’s request. He turns down the offer of a Moorish physician, Ibn-Hakia, to restore her sight, fearing the shock might be too much for Iolanta. A knight, Vaudémont, breaches the garden wall, falls in love with Iolanta and, upon discovering that she is blind, talks to her about light and the visual magnificence of the world. Reluctantly, the king agrees to Ibn-Hakia’s procedure and grants his daughter’s hand to Vaudémont. The operation is successful: Iolanta can see.
By contrast, Bartok’s Judith is undone by her desire to see. Arriving at the castle — itself an anthropomorphic character that groans, sighs and trembles — Judith professes her unconditional love for the forbidding Bluebeard. Noticing a number of locked doors, she insists on opening them one by one, finding each time evidence of violence: a torture chamber, bloodied weapons, blood-flecked jewels, a lake of tears. Judith becomes convinced that Bluebeard has murdered his previous wives and that the last door will reveal their bodies. But when she opens it, she finds them alive, trapped in a state of undead eternity, and she is compelled to join them.
