The Wooden Prince: https://youtu.be/dWt1JyeiQHs
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle: No trailer (yet).
A fantastic double bill – two perfectly suited works.
It’s a bit tricky for me to comment on the ballet as I am woefully ignorant and inexperienced about how to respond/write about this art form – I am still at the stage, for a fair part of the time, at just locking in amazement at what the dancers can do with their bodies! Additionally, while I can gain understanding of the emotional situations depicted in the music, making a connection between this and the movements of the dancers.
There was a gentle liquid beauty about the movements of the dancers, particularly the corps which was very seductive but I found the motivation for what was happening tricky to follow – was there a clear dramatic line being unfolded or was it more a static meditation of emotions? I suspect the answer is just to go to many more ballets and so gradually begin to comprehend the language that is used.
Bluebeard’s Castle is an amazing and fascinating piece – one of the very rare works where almost any interpretation can be given; I honestly do not think that there is one essentially ‘correct’ interpretation and that all others are simply riffs upon the work itself, some perhaps very interesting and provocative, others weird, others just wrong. I am not sure that there is any other work in the operatic repertoire that is like this…
Here the superb Kasper Holten had a characteristically well thought through and with a stimulating ‘concept (dread which I do not really like using!). The set was an artist’s studio and Bluebeard the artist. Initially I was not sure if Judit was the latest in a series of muses, all the previous ones whom Bluebeard had ‘immortalised’ in his work. In this ‘interpretation’, the showing of these works to Judit was the equivalent of opening the doors. I liked this idea and it makes sense that the artist’s treasures are his work that he has produced and that the source of inspiration for each is a previous wife/relationship/idea. I felt it could be all or any of these. And just as, I suppose, any act of artistic creation needs something to stimulate/provoke it, so the artists needs a series of different inspirations to work from.
However, on reflection I think that Judit was and always had been the muse, inspiring different works over the years. I think this is more likely, particularly as at the end she returns. Bluebeard is not left alone (as indicated in the libretto) but instead his muse/inspiration does return/ is always with him and yet always, in some sense, lacking something. What she could inspire in the past seems, in the present, unsatisfactory. A reflection of the artistic process perhaps in always striving for expression and being, necessarily, dissatisfied with what you have done in the past.