Kares/Voros/Helsinki/Malkki - B?la Bart?k: Bluebeard's Castle

Composed in 1911, Bluebeard�s Castle is B�la Bart�k�s only opera � a radical masterpiece which has secured a place alongside the other innovative music dramas of the same period, from Debussy�s Pell�as et M�lisande to Berg�s Wozzeck. Planning to write a one-act opera, Bart�k settled on a libretto by B�la Bal�zs with the kind of surreal and/or macabre themes that would soon feature in his two ballets, The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin. The main source for the libretto text was a play by Maeterlinck, a retelling of Perrault�s gruesome tale of Barbe-Bleue, the sinister yet strangely seductive wife-killer. Bal�zs turned the drama into what he called a �mystery play�, however, and his stylisation of the story throws the weight of the drama onto stage-setting and music. Susanna M�lkki and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra have already proved their Bart�k credentials with a disc of his ballet scores which was chosen as Record of the Week in BBC Radio 3 Record Review and earned top marks in Diapason and on the website Klassik-Heute. Joined by Mika Kares as Duke Bluebeard and his Judit, the Hungarian mezzo-soprano Szilvia V�r�s, the team here performs Bart�k�s darkly glittering, shimmering and threatening score in a live recording from 2020.