It was free with Arte and had English captions-I enjoyed much of it-a big cast and music I liked much better that Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle-the production held my attention throughout-of course I have no productions to compare it with. The cast acted very well and I must say the women climbing up on those tables was a site to behold! Regards, Len
The Lyon website describes it this way:
"Modern and flying the flag for liberty, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue by Paul Dukas turns Perrault's story into a true hymn to women’s liberation and discovering the truth. Terribly current.
Synopsis
What is Bluebeard, accused by the crowd of having killed his first five wives, hiding? From the moment she arrives at his gloomy castle, Ariane, his new wife, is determined to discover her husband's secret. She ends up freeing his first five wives but they prefer captivity to freedom. Ariane, however, decides to take hers.
More than feminist
A pupil at the Paris Conservatory, Dukas, a friend of Debussy and former music critic, was a gifted and atypical musician, perhaps best known for The Sorcerer's Apprentice (immortalized by Disney in the film Fantasia). It was in 1907 that Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, his only opera, was successfully staged at the Opéra Comique, based on a text by Maurice Maeterlinck, who was also the librettist for Debussy - denounced by some as a somewhat too visible influence and with whom Dukas shared a similar taste in orchestration. In fact, Dukas adapts one of Wagner’s techniques, the leitmotiv, which allows him to depict his characters in the music, using his own language. Rich in tone and colour, this is very effective when it comes to making the listener feel the atmosphere in Bluebeard’s castle. Long forgotten, the work strikes a very contemporary chord: composed principally for women's roles, it is more than simply feminist, posing the question of freedom as a universal concept.
A co-production with the Teatro Real of Madrid "
Times and tastes change, that's all. IMHO neither Domingo nor Alagna had any business singing Samson, for example. Not compared to Vickers!
) but here it is again. Each track is exquisite in its own way. Wish he'd do Debussy and more Mahler. He's got the expressive range to be superbly effective, IMHO.
