Max Jiménez
Professor Roundtree
FMX 211
24 September 2018
Bluebeard’s Castle
The opera I chose to
watch was Bluebeard’s Castle,
composed in 1918 by Béla Bartók, written by Béla Balázs and based on the French
folktale “La Barbe bleue.” As a
result of a live stage performance being incredibly difficult to find, I viewed
a German film version of the opera from 1963: Herzog Blaubarts Burg (Duke Bluebeard’s Castle) with English
subtitles.
The opera was
altered from the original folktale in several ways. The opera version only
contains two performing characters, Bluebeard and Judith. In addition to this,
the way in which the story progresses and ultimately ends is quite different
from the centuries-old folktale this opera adapted. In place of Judith being
left to her own devices and ultimately discovering Bluebeard’s room with the
corpses of his former wives, Bluebeard stays in his castle and gradually
reveals his dark secrets to his new wife, opening the seven doors to unveil his
still living wives, much to Judith’s horror where she must take the place of
the wives that had come before her.
The opera offers a slightly different take on the character
and actions of Judith. Rather than being a hopeless young woman forced to marry
and stranded in the castle, she appears to gently and persistently persuade Bluebeard
to reveal his secrets and true motive (revealed by opening each of the seven
doors throughout the opera), until this would lead to her demise in the end.
The French phrase “mise-en-scène” literally means “staging
or putting on an action or scene” (Barsam 1) It is the sum of everything that
the audience sees, hears, and experiences while viewing the movie. The way that
the set design, lighting, and costuming in an opera, or film in this case is a
component of “mise-en-scène.”
For Bluebeard’s
Castle, I would say that the director and set designer had a challenge for
a setting as brooding and as dark as the Duke’s Castle. This is a result of the
difficulty one would have when transforming what is traditionally an opera to a
movie format. After viewing Bluebeard’s
Castle, I was really able to tell how the lighting and prop placement
contributed to the “mise-en-scène”, and was successfully able to convey the
dark, overall feeling of the castle with seven doorways. Director Michael Powell
and designer Hein Heckroth used this quality of the opera to their advantage by
creating an intense, dramatic feel, where lighting and abstract set design slowly
revealed Bluebeard's dark, twisted motive in regard to his newest wife. “The
vivid colors and abstract décor designed by Heckroth and his team give the film
a suitably oppressive feel.” (Melville) This abstract design and use of
lighting clearly drew on the expressionistic style that had originated in
Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. According to Chris
Baldick of the University of London, “Its typical trait is to present the world
solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional
effect (Heckroth’s abstract set design) in order to evoke moods or ideas.”
Another component of “mise-en-scène” would be composition.
To best explain what composition is, I have included an excerpt from Looking at Movies: An Introduction to Film by
Richard Barsam: “Composition is the organization, distribution, balance, and
general relationship of actors and objects within the space of each shot.”
(Barsam 1) Bluebeard’s Castle is an
opera that in the original form did not contain any “stage action”, and the
director, in my opinion, was able to overcome this “lack of stage action” with
his choice of composition, i.e. the use of a variety of camera angles including
panning shots, close-ups, and the use of overlay effects throughout the film.
It really feels as though the characters are progressing deeper and darker as
Bluebeard continues to reveal himself to Judith.
BLUEBEARD’S
CASTLE AS A VIDEO GAME
If I were a 21st century director, I
would have to revise the original libretto (script/the text of an opera) a bit
to fit it to an immersive and elaborate first-person puzzle game, so that it
would best suit this opera. I would start off the game by reverting to the beginning
of the folktale that the opera is based upon, where Bluebeard announces that he
must he leave the castle and gives Judith the keys but forbids her to go into
certain rooms. As you would progress through each door, you would have to find
clues to unlock the next door, and little by little you would piece together
what events had transpired in each room until you reached the last.
The game would be heavily dependent on the
user’s choice, as it would affect the core gameplay and various paths the
player would be able to take. To reach the seventh and final door the player
would have the choice of gently and persistently persuading (with the use of
in-game dialogue) Blackbeard to reveal it himself (upon his return) as Judith
had in the opera or participate in a battle against Blackbeard to find out what
lay behind that door. Although the truth would be revealed in the end, it would
not be to the satisfaction of the protagonist.
This dark, unavoidable demise would definitely
make this an intriguing game to play. If I were successfully able to combine
these gameplay elements with the “suitably oppressive feel” of the opera’s set
design and the dissonance in its score, it would certainly showcase why and how
this piece is important, not only in the chronology of Opera itself, but in
many psychologically unnerving pieces of mystery and horror.
Works Cited
Barsam, Richard. “Mise-En-Scène.” WW Norton and
Company, 2007.
Edward, Blake. “MISE-EN-SCENE.” College Film
& Media Studies, 22 Feb. 2016, collegefilmandmediastudies.com/mise-en-scene-2/.
Jordan, Rolf. “Bluebeard's Castle: Libretto.” The
Archers Manifesto, 1964,
www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/64_Bluebeard/Words.html.
Melville, David. “Enter the Mind of a Madman...” 17
Dec. 2003.
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