Bartok The Wooden Prince

Bartók's wrote his only opera, the one-act Duke Bluebeard's Castle in 1911, but it didn't receive its premiere until May 24, 1918 in a concert shared with the composer's The Wooden Prince. Bluebeard's plot is about the ill-fated Judith who, in spite of warnings, marries Duke Bluebeard and goes with him to his ominous castle where she finds seven locked doors. Judith insists on unlocking each one, finding behind them a torture chamber, an armoury, a treasury, a garden, Bluebeard's empire, a lake of tears and, behind the seventh door, Bluebeard's three previous wives, not dead, but immortal. Judith then joins the other wives behind the seventh door.

The music history of the year 1917 cannot be separated from the dramatic events of the Great War, then in its third year. Yet many of the composers in our edition were only indirectly affected by it. Gustav Holst, for example, though two years younger than Vaughan Williams, likewise volunteered for war duty, only to be turned away as unfit for service.