Karen Cargill as Judith and Christian Van Horn as Bluebeard in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Bluebeard’s Castle.Michael Cooper/Supplied
Title: Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung
Written by: Béla Bartók/Arnold Schoenberg
Conductor: Johannes Debus
Company: Canadian Opera Company
Venue: Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts
City: Toronto
Year: Runs until May 16
At the opera, time and again, the anxious lover runs into an eternal warning: The beloved is unknowable and unpossessable, but tread carefully should you choose to overlook the red flags.
The Canadian Opera Company’s revival of their 1992 double bill – originally staged by Robert Lepage and now directed by François Racine, who weds Bartók’s hour-long Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s 30-minute Erwartung – interprets this lesson in opposite yet compatible ways: The former approaches it linearly, classically, whereas the latter is fragmented and scattered.
In Bluebeard, the titular Duke (bass-baritone Christian Van Horn) and his lover Judith (soprano Karen Cargill), dressed as a bride, arrive before his enigmatic castle, which Michael Levine’s dynamic set design represents as a rotating replica in the distance of the raked stage bordered by a gold-tiled frame. Judith has abruptly abandoned a fiancé at the altar for the Duke, feeling an all-consuming love for him despite rumours about his former wives.
Based on Charles Perrault’s 1697 folk tale, the Hungarian-language libretto thus finds Judith inside the pitch-dark castle, where, upon discovering seven locked doors, she becomes insatiably curious and resolves to let some light – and his truths – in. The Duke hands over a key to each door reluctantly, witnessing how the revelation of his perverse secrets – a torture chamber, a lake of tears, a treasury – casts her into flights of frenzy that return her to obedience.
Ms. Cargill's commanding vibrato elucidates Judith’s states of fury and hesitation.Michael Cooper/Supplied
The narrative drudgery of observing Judith persuasively wrestle away each key and open each door is remedied by Robert Thomson’s varied lighting design that suggests what the audience can’t see. He designates a colour for each room and implements effects visualizing the subtleties in Bartók’s score – which features Technicolor shimmers, regal chimes and ominous trills – and utilizes concentrated spotlights allowing Cargill’s performance of torment to radiate.
Cargill, whose commanding vibrato elucidates Judith’s states of fury and hesitation, charms during the “Fifth Door” sequence, when her awestruck whispering creates a tonal contrast with Johannes Debus’s consummate orchestra, which has never sounded so epic and robust. And, since the Duke primarily plays a passive role, Van Horn’s sinister timbre and exaggerated yet decisive gestures only strike their notes during the opera’s blood-red conclusion.
The ending, though, neglects to offer a considered moment to contemplate the dramatic implications Judith’s submissions have on her autonomy, unravelling the accumulated stakes and emphasizing the Duke presiding over an empire of his own divination.
Anna Gabler as The Woman and Noam Markus in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Erwartung.Michael Cooper/Supplied
In the program notes, Racine considers the Duke’s counterpoint in Erwartung – the 1924 German-language monodrama written by Marie Pappenheim – to be The Woman (soprano Anna Gabler), an unreliable, straitjacketed patient relaying her memories to a psychologist (Mark Johnson).
Unlike Bluebeard, this production, amplified by Laurie-Shawn Borzovoy’s spirited media effects, actually renders the contents of The Woman’s locked doors in surreal, seamlessly blended sequences. In a flash, the stage tilts, a tree grows out of the walls or her naked lover lays before her as she holds a scythe in her hand. As she sings of her disconsolation, the initially murky narrative clarifies: Her search for her lover (Noam Markus) – who, as a photograph at the top of the show indicates, is already dead – pivots into the series of jealousy-driven events that lead to his bloody demise.
If the procedural nature of Bluebeard turns tiresome, then the ambiguous, jumbled manner of Erwartung skirts elusiveness. But, at Wednesday night’s performance, Gabler’s clear, resounding voice lent a welcome gravity to the rather demanding piece. With only her character’s visceral scorn to play against, she convincingly portrays that sticky sense of being emotionally unmoored from an object of desire in the time and space of discombobulated memory.
An enchanting double bill, what both librettos – where the outcomes feel inevitable, and the action, unseen, occur in the characters’ minds – lack are the hard-earned moments audiences “expect” (which is what Erwartung translates to) to avoid falling into a reverie. The expressive scores, with their majestic feeling and discordant textures, become hampered by their antiquated, misogynistic morals, furthering the detachment imposed by the gilded frame.
It is as though the COC’s Bluebeard’s Castle/Erwartung is intended to be viewed as a hazy, deep, moving painting – one that wishes yet is never able to escape its inherent flatness.