Bluebeard’s Castle

Béla Bartók wrote his only opera to a libretto inspired by a folk ballad by Béla Balázs in 1911, for the Lipótváros Casino opera competition. Bartók’s work was rejected in the competition as „unperformable”, and it was only seven years later that it premiered at the Royal Hungarian Opera House – to little success. The recognition of the Bluebeard came after it was included in the 1936 re-run. The characters in the story are Bluebeard and Judith, and the setting is Bluebeard’s castle, with Judith roaming it. The Bluebeard’s castle is actually a metaphor for the man’s soul, whose doors are opened one by one by the woman. Despite the prince’s repeated pleas („Judit, my love. Ask no questions.”), Judith’s extensive curiosity has fatal consequences: Judith ends up in the dark chamber of old women forever. The story of Prince Bluebeard’s castle unfolds the permanent relationship based on attraction and repulsion between male and female. It symbolically presents the eternally recurring series of human relationships.

János Kass first created illustrations for the work in 1960 at the request of the Helikon Publishing House, and later returned to the theme several times. The artist said of Bluebeard the following: „It is the eternal duel of two opposites, black and white, positive and negative. The conflict arising from the fundamental difference between man and woman is fate.” This eternal opposition is effectively expressed by the artist’s use of contrasting colours that convey strong emotions: the blue-red and black-white colour pairs. Finally, the golden colour is the climax, which sinks into the blackness of the background, radiating hopelessness. The minimalism of the forms makes the effect created by the colours even more powerful.

In the early 2000s, János Kass also planned a twelve-minute animated film on the subject (to the music of György Kurtág), but the final version was not completed. According to the sketches of the animated film, the artist imagined the moving image sequence with colours and shapes similar to the screen prints seen here.