How long does an opera need to be? How long is a piece of string? On being asked for his favourite opera Sir Thomas Beecham instantly replied, La Bohème. Why was the follow-up question. Because it’s the shortest. Not strictly correct. But who really cares about the length of any opera when the story itself is adequately told? This pairing of two shorter operas, Bartók’s only opera, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, and Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy was given an added twist by the Intendant of Hamburg State Opera, Tobias Kratzer, in deciding to preface this double bill with Robert Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe- und Leben. His self-declared aim was to explore how gender and power dynamics have operated over different generations.
Even before they were married, Schumann told Clara Wieck: “The first year of our marriage you shall forget the artist, you shall live only for yourself and your house and your husband.” Today, very few women would sign up to that kind of relationship. However, like so much else in the past, we often make the mistake of defining historical events in terms of present-day sensibilities. Female submissiveness was a fact of life, and the poems by Adalbert von Chamisso on which Schumann drew for his song cycle were not seen at the time as primary examples of male chauvinism. The eight songs (Schumann omitted Chamisso’s ninth poem) describe the course of a woman’s love for a man, from their first encounter through marriage and the birth of her first child, up to the moment of the husband’s death and her own widowhood, all seen from the female perspective.
1840 was Schumann’s “year of song”. The opening lines of his cycle Frauenliebe- und Leben make the inequality between the sexes clear: Since first seeing him/I think I am blind/Wherever I look/Him only I see. Dramatising this cycle for the stage is rather like gilding the lily. Everything is there in the words and music, but Katzer seems intent on superimposing a history lesson. He has the unnamed woman seated in period costume on a sofa for most of the time, leaving its sanctity occasionally to sally forth across an initially unlit stage, taking in the presence of the pianist, Éric Le Sage on the opposite side, with the far reaches gradually revealing a set dominated by a short flight of steps leading to a mezzanine level and two further staircases. The controlling influence of the husband is apparent in a Bluebeard-like figure – he is one of the links spanning the three elements of the evening – who repeatedly circles the sofa, kneels before her in the third song with the marriage proposal, whereupon bouquets of flowers are brought onto the stage in celebration. The ring now on her finger in the fourth song, the sisters she calls for assistance in the following song, Helft mir, ihr Schwestern, are quickly hustled away by the Bluebeard figure. The first child she bears is shown by the nanny to Bluebeard alone, and in the penultimate song the stage behind her is now peopled with eight children, all female (historically incorrect), an allusion to the number of successful pregnancies in the marriage between Robert and Clara. In the final song detailing the first pain she has been caused, namely by the death of her husband, this is inverted by Katzer to show the woman in the agonies of childbirth, attended by a midwife whose bloodied hands bring forth a stillborn, only for the mother to die shortly afterwards on the sofa. As if there might be any doubt about what has happened, a coffin is brought onto the stage, followed by a coterie of mourners.
Kate Lindsey sang and acted the role of the woman. Her voice was on the smaller side, perhaps emphasising the fragility of her being, but always neatly focused. She floated an exquisite line in the first song for “Wie im wachen Traume”, where she sings of the dream-like state into which his physical presence has cast her. Elsewhere, her warm mezzo coloured the excitement she felt in the third song, Ich kann’s nicht fassen, nicht glauben at the growing belief that she is to be his chosen bride. She fully encompassed the sense of solitude when relegated to her sofa, with only a book as her companion. Le Sage’s accompaniment was always discreet, supporting the vocal line and delivering a poignant postlude from a semi-darkened stage.
At this point, Karina Canellakis, marking her house debut and first operatic production in Germany, had already taken up her position in the pit. The soft murmurings from the lower strings gave a ghostly feel to the start of Bartók’s opera while Le Sage closed the piano lid (the instrument remained in position throughout what followed) and departed. Singing her first Judith, the German mezzo Annika Schlicht made a very favourable impression, the fullness of her voice matching the assertiveness of her character. This was no ingénue but a woman aware of her sexual allure and eager to display her physicality in exchanges with Bluebeard. In her repeated insistence on wanting all the keys to the locked chambers inside the castle, she almost became a caricature of the nagging housewife, underlining the parallels with stories of ill-fated female curiosity, such as Eve, the wife of Lot, Psyche, and Pandora. Her secure chest register gave further emphasis to instances when she became aware of a castle that breathes, bleeds, and weeps.
This work by Bartók is the closest you’ll come to a horror movie on the operatic stage. For this effect to be palpable, two things are essential. The full measure of the expressive power in the music needs to be unlocked, and the staging itself must shock. Canellakis, who has already recorded an interpretation of this opera, was completely inside the score. In particular, she brought out all the brooding, disturbing and intensely unsettling moments, relishing flute tremolos that could have come straight from Salome, the pungency of the bass clarinet, and the role of trilling woodwind and keyboard percussion in setting teeth on edge, unleashing the C major ecstasy and euphoria at the opening of the fifth door, and delivering dramatic punches wherever needed.
However, instead of enhancing the horror, the staging diminished its potential. Katzer might have wanted to make a closer connection with a middle-class domestic milieu in which upsetting things might occasionally happen by retaining the same set as used earlier, but the opening of the individual doors had little dramatic impact. The only exception to this was for the treasury, where Judith was given the key to a jewellery box and pulled out lots of baubles and trinkets. In a completely anachronistic touch, for the fourth door a TV set was wheeled onto the stage with a group of spectators eyeing the proceedings, and children playing with toy rockets. Judith sang of the roses and carnations present in Bluebeard’s garden of beauty, and yet there wasn’t a single flower on stage. For the fifth door leading to the representation of Bluebeard’s lands and domains, a video projector and portable screen were deployed. The physical expanse was quickly displaced by images of a woman being choked to death during an act of sexual intercourse.
Virtually the only real chill came after the opening of the seventh door, when Bluebeard’s three former wives, representing dawn, midday, and dusk, appeared from behind a glass-framed door, followed by Kate Lindsey in a return of Schumann’s woman, now busy with her embroidery. Compared to them, Judith sings at this point, I am poor. To which Bluebeard replies that she is destined to be the fairest of them all, while both wrestle each other to the floor until she manages to grab a key and flee from the stage. As the murmurings from the dark strings return, closing the circle, Bluebeard is shown on a darkened stage, seated at the piano, whose keyboard lid he opens before slamming it violently shut.
Bluebeard was sung by Johan Reuter. I enjoyed his warm, rounded timbre and his absolute assurance of delivery but I missed a touch of malevolence. Nobody should ever feel entirely comfortable in the presence of a serial killer like Bluebeard, and yet he almost became the kind of figure with whom you’d be happy to have a drink in the local pub. His touchy-feely exchanges with Judith merely underlined his carnal nature. Perhaps his relative harmlessness was a reminder that the pathological is often hidden behind a cloak of ordinariness.
Reuter provided a further link by appearing in the final element, Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy as the merchant Simone. This staging moved the storyline close to kitchen sink realism, with a large bed covered in white bed linen on the left and a capacious wardrobe on the right, while the previous set was later revealed through a gauze curtain. Before the prelude itself, a series of sententious video images were shown, depicting a modern man feeding soiled laundry into a washing machine or cuddling a baby on his chest, all designed to “join the movement of embracing the modern man”. What that had to do with the overall theme of women being under the control of men is a moot point.
The heady, hothouse atmosphere conjured up in the opulent scoring so redolent of Richard Strauss is matched by hedonist desire in the staging. At the start, Bianca, Simone’s wife, is engaged in simulated copulation with her lover Guido, son of the Duke of Florence, under the duvet. Nothing is done to hide the full extent of this adultery from Simone when he returns home and all three characters act according to the principles of a ménage à trois. At the start, I found the voice of the Belgian tenor Thomas Blondelle as Guido a little tremulous and excitable, but he soon settled to give a confident account of a young lover secure in his social superiority and amorous powers of persuasion.
The Canadian soprano Ambur Braid gave a striking account of Bianca, unquestioning in her desire for physical and emotional satisfaction, and quite brazen in the conduct of her affair before the eyes of her husband, including her express command to Guido to kill Simone. The merchant’s tragedy, an expert in and purveyor of the richest fabrics available, is poignantly manifest when his wife and her lover are engaged in a love duet, while key words from the earlier video – Strength, Compassion, Modernity, True Masculinity – are displayed on a video screen. This, in turn, indicates a larger-than-life Simone shaking his head backstage. The inkiness of Reuter’s bass register added further weight to his emotional distraction. The final twist? After wrestling with Guido Simone strangles him using a thick chain, only to hear his wife say “Why did you not tell me you were so strong?” To which he replies, “Why did you not tell me you were so fair?”
Where do these three separate elements leave the spectator at the conclusion? As perplexed as ever about the specific roles of men and women, as well as their reversal. Katzer provides no coherent overall answers. An interviewer once asked Bartók if he might be Bluebeard. “What if I turn out to be Judith?” he replied.
Alexander Hall
Frauenliebe und -Leben Op. 42
Composed by Robert Schumann
Based on eight poems by Adalbert von Chamisso
Kate Lindsey (mezzo-soprano), Éric Le Sage (piano)
Duke Bluebeard’s Castle
Composed by Béla Bartók
Libretto by Béla Balázs
(Sung in Hungarian with surtitles in German and English)
Bluebeard – Johan Reuter; Judith – Annika Schlicht
A Florentine Tragedy
Composed by Alexander Zemlinsky
Libretto by Zemlinsky based on Oscar Wilde in a translation by Max Meyerfeld
(Sung in German with surtitles in German and English)
Simone – Johan Reuter; Bianca – Ambur Braid; Guido – Thomas Blondelle
In cooperation with Den Norske Opera Oslo
Director – Tobias Kratzer; Revival Director Ludivine Petit; Set and Costumes Designer – Rainer Sellmaier; Video – Manuel Braun; Lighting Designer – Michael Bauer; Dramaturgy – Henriette von Schnakenburg
Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg; Karina Canellakis (conductor)
Hamburg State Opera, 12 April 2026
All photos © Matthias Baus
Top image: Kate Lindsey in Schumann
Further performances until 22 May