Composers: Bartók
Compositions: Bluebeard’s Castle
Performers: John Relyea b, Michelle DeYoung ms, Bergen Philharmonic/Gardner
Catalogue Number: CHANDOS CHSA5237 (SACD)

Bela Bartók’s sole opera Bluebeard’s Castle was written in 1911 when he was 30. It is based on the 17th-century French folktale of Bluebeard, a rich nobleman who dwells in a castle of locked doors and whose beautiful young wives keep mysteriously disappearing. Somewhat ominously, Bartók dedicated the opera to his own teenaged wife Márta, who would later be supplanted by one of her husband’s (19-year-old) piano students when he was 42.