On the eve of her wedding, Judith has abandoned her fiancé and her parents in order to follow Duke Bluebeard to his castle. She is prepared to shed some light on the dark secrets that her lover – if the rumours are to be believed – is attempting to hide from the world here. However, the deeper Judith ventures within the soul of this sinister edifice and its owner, the more destructive Bluebeard’s resistance to her unceasing curiosity becomes…

The French writer Charles Perrault gave the ancient saga of the bloodthirsty wife-killer with unconventional facial hair a lasting place in literature with his version of the fairy tale ‘Bluebeard’ in 1697. In densely atmospheric scenes and a wealth of tone colours inspired by traditional Hungarian folk music, Béla Bartók tells the story of Judith and Bluebeard in his only opera, first performed in 1918, as a poetic drama of the soul that does justice to both protagonists.

Ballet director Demis Volpi has already attracted attention with numerous interdisciplinary productions. In ‘Bluebeard’s Castle’ he will now bring song and dance together for the first time on the stage of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. read less