MADRID — Béla Bartók believed that his violent, sexually charged ballet-pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin was the perfect companion piece to his only opera, the one-act Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. While German director Christof Loy is not the first to stage the works together — the first production of The Mandarin in 1926 already paired them — his production stands out by presenting the works in reverse order of their composition and fusing them into a single concept.
This co-production by Madrid’s Teatro Real and Theater Basel had its first outing in Switzerland in 2022–23 and is now having a run of five performances in Madrid ending Nov. 10. This marks the first performance of Bartók’s stage works by the Real, which provides an outstanding cast and virtuosic orchestra to realize Loy’s insightful if sometimes problematic conception.
The action of The Mandarin involves three thugs (virulently danced by Nicky van Cleef, David Vento, and Joni Österlund) who force the Girl to lure three men to their garret to be robbed. The three clients: an old rake (depicted as a maniacally violent rapist by Mário Branco); a shy young man (here as the Poet played by Nicolas Franciscus); and the Mandarin, a wealthy Chinese Man (played, thankfully, without orientalist features by Gorka Culebras). Each seduction begins with a “decoy game,” introduced by increasingly long clarinet cadenzas, brilliantly executed by the Real’s solo clarinetist, Luis Miguel Méndez.
The Girl, played with an impressive combination of strength, impetuousness, and vulnerability by the versatile Spanish dancer Carla Pérez Mora, is oddly kept off-stage for the beginning of the seduction scenes — sometimes Loy could have helped us understand the complexities of the score with more closely coordinated stage action. As in the original scenario, the first two seductions end quickly with the thugs dispatching with the clients. The Mandarin, however, is impervious to the thugs’ assaults, in this production abetted by the first two clients. Only when the Girl shows the Mandarin affection does he die in her arms.
Some of Loy’s changes to the original scenario are brilliant, others gratuitous. The change of the first client from an inept old lecher into a crazed rapist shows Loy to be deaf to Bartók’s parodistic, farting bassoons. His sympathetic reimagining of the young man as the Poet, on the other hand, resonates with Bartók’s music and is central to Loy’s attempt to create unity.
In Loy’s conception the Poet is not only a “client” in the ballet-pantomime, but also an observer in the moving epilogue Loy adds to The Mandarin — a pas de deux for the Girl and the Mandarin set to the first movement of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta.
The Poet is also the speaker, that is, the poet/librettist who introduces both halves of the evening with the prologue originally meant to be spoken by a bard at the beginning of Bluebeard. The Poet’s last appearance occurs as the opening music returns at the end of Bluebeard. He thus provides both frame and through-line to the evening.
Perhaps Loy’s most brilliant stroke is his interpretation of the Mandarin as a Christ figure. Indeed, The Mandarin is no orientalist “other,” but our Ur-selves: a figure representing a deep, ancient layer of humanity that has the power to redeem one from the alienation of modernity. The character personifies Bartók’s beliefs about the way elements of ancient folk music breathe new life into modern music.
Culebras embodies the Mandarin masterfully. A tall, generous dancing actor of stunning good looks and wide emotional range, he attracts not only the Girl, but also the men. He appears first as an elegant gentleman in a black tuxedo, seductively unbuttoned white shirt, and hip man bun. In the course of enduring unspeakable tortures, he is stripped and ends the ballet-pantomime only in white underpants. The final minutes of the work show him bleeding from a stab wound to his side delivered by the jealous Poet — acolyte turned betrayer? As he is embraced by the Girl, the last image evokes the Madonna holding her crucified son. Loy tellingly titles the intimate, quiet dance for the Girl and the Mandarin that follows the ballet-pantomime without pause “Resurrection.”
Bluebeard takes us from the The Mandarin’s world of violence and raw sexuality to one of mystery and introspection. The opera, almost devoid of action, is notoriously difficult to stage. Over the course of an hour, a newlywed couple arrives at Bluebeard’s dark castle, and the bride, Judith, insists on the opening of seven locked doors.
For those who wish to stage this symbolist opera, Bartók and the work’s librettist, Béla Balázs, throw a life preserver in the form of lighting instructions. They imagined different colored lights for each of the doors, increasing in brilliance from the first door revealing Bluebeard’s torture chamber to the fifth revealing his vast dominions. Following this, they imagined a slow fade to darkness in the course of the revelations of the sixth and seventh doors: a lake of tears and a room containing Bluebeard’s past wives, whom Judith must join.
Regrettably, lighting designer Thomas Kleinstück uses no colors and almost static lighting — it may have been just a tad brighter for the fifth door but got noticeably darker only at the very end of the work.
Designer Márton Ágh’s set depicts a deserted, trash-strewn area on the outskirts of a city featuring a graffiti–covered telephone booth and a bare mattress with boarded-up houses on stilts in the background. This works perfectly for The Mandarin. Yet, although the boarded-up houses, brought down to ground level for the beginning of the opera, suggest the castle’s closed doors, the decrepit urban setting is an awkward fit for the opera.
However symbolic Bluebeard’s text, it is perplexing to have a newlywed couple in black dress and tuxedo — outfits that resonate with those of the Girl and the Mandarin — arrive home to a trash heap that they refer to as a castle. Much of the stage action in Bluebeard feels random. What inspires Judith to rush either to set up or take down cheap folding chairs? While in The Mandarin Loy was equally effective in staging scenes of violence and of tenderness, in Bluebeard only the tender moments feel organic.
The German singers, dramatic soprano Evelyn Herlitzius and bass Christof Fischesser, possess beautiful, resonant instruments. Both are fine actors in clear command of their roles. One small disappointment in Herlitzius’ otherwise satisfying delivery: In place of the high C meant to depict her astonishment at the overwhelming sublimity of Bluebeard’s vast dominions, she produced an unpitched scream.
While it’s clear that neither singer is a native speaker of Hungarian, their pronunciation was generally laudable. The same cannot be said of the otherwise excellent Dutch actor Nicolas Franciscus’ recitations. This begs the question: Why not either employ a Hungarian actor who would grasp the rhythm and inflection of the original text or allow the actor to recite in a language in which he is comfortable?
Spanish conductor Gustavo Gimeno, who assumed the position of musical director of the Teatro Real this year and has been music director of the Toronto Symphony since fall 2020, led the large forces in a powerful, virtually flawless performance.
Despite its few shortcomings, Loy’s production is a probing reading of two of Bartók’s greatest works. At the premiere, the acoustically pristine Teatro Real showed its company to be on the level of the world’s greatest opera houses. Its programming shows a thoughtful mixture of canonic and lesser-known works; this season also includes Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-blue as well as performances for children of Charles Perrault’s fairy tale that is the basis for Bartók’s and Dukas’ operas.
Madrid should be on the itinerary of every opera lover.
