By Damián Autorino
Editor at Moto Perpetuo
Composer: Béla Bartók
Work: A kékszakállú herceg vára (Duke Bluebeard’s Castle)
Libretto: Béla Balázs
Performers:
- Gábor Bretz, bass-baritone (Bluebeard)
- Rinat Shaham, mezzo-soprano (Judith)
Orchestra: Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Karina Canellakis
Label: Pentatone
Release date: April 4, 2025
Duration: 60’36” (excluding prologue)
Format: Studio recording
🎧 Available on major streaming platforms and physical formats
There are works that grip a musician for a lifetime. For Karina Canellakis, Bluebeard’s Castle is one of them. In this new studio recording with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra—an ensemble she has led since 2019 and with which she recently extended her contract—Canellakis offers a deeply personal reading of Bartók’s only opera, shaped by years of reflection and performance.
“Bluebeard’s Castle is a world unto itself which has haunted me for as long as I can remember,” she writes in the booklet. Her connection to the work goes beyond the score, tapping into its psychological and emotional layers with remarkable sensitivity. This is not merely a tale of a man and his mysterious castle—it is, for Canellakis, a meditation on memory, love, and mortality. “It is an homage to life itself, to life’s brevity and fleeting beauty, to being human, to love, and to death.”
These themes find expression in every detail of the interpretation. As a studio recording—unlike a live performance—this version gains from the ability to shape and balance each sound with precision. The Netherlands Radio Philharmonic responds with luminous playing, revealing the opera’s extraordinary wealth of orchestral color. Bartók’s score becomes a sequence of tone poems, with each door of the castle opening onto a different sonic world.
Particularly striking are the solos from the horn, clarinet, and violin—highlighted by Canellakis herself in the liner notes—as well as the haunting shimmer of celesta and harp in the Lake of Tears. The orchestra delivers the terror and splendor of the fifth door with immense power, and the final nine minutes—the revelation behind the seventh door—are overwhelming in their intensity.
The vocal performances match the orchestral detail. Hungarian bass-baritone Gábor Bretz has inhabited the role of Bluebeard for many years. Here, his voice is neither sinister nor theatrical. Canellakis remarks how his native fluency brings warmth and vulnerability: “He makes me feel as if Bluebeard is a friend, standing right beside me… not a caricature, but a real person.”
Rinat Shaham, too, has long lived with the role of Judith. Her voice navigates a delicate balance of passion, strength, and fragility, with a nuanced understanding of the character’s emotional arc. “She is at once vulnerable yet strong,” writes Canellakis, praising Shaham’s ability to “paint every pastel shade in between” with agility and sensual tone.
Studio recordings of Bluebeard’s Castle often become reference points for how this enigmatic work continues to evolve with each generation. This new album may well become one of them—not only for its refinement and orchestral brilliance, but for its capacity to reveal, through Canellakis’ guidance, the human soul inside the myth.
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