Bluebeard's Castle

by Béla Bartók (1881-1945).
Opera in one act. 1911.
Libretto by Béla Balázs, after the fairy-story by Charles Perrault.
First performance at the Budapest Opera on 24th May 1918.

Newly married to Duke Bluebeard, Judith opens a series of doors, revealing, behind the seventh, Bluebeard's three former wives, representing the morning, noon and evening of his life: Judith represents night. Bluebeard dresses her in the crown and robes from the third door, the Treasury, and she passes with the others through the seventh door, leaving Bluebeard to solitude and the coming eternal darkness.

Bluebeard's Castle is Bartók's only opera and has been seen as representing the conflict between male and female, the rational and the emotional.