Stravinsky’s riot-inducing Rite of Spring and Bartók’s rejected, unstageable Bluebeard’s Castle share one unstaged evening on the Royal Opera House’s Main Stage.
The Royal Opera gives Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle in concert at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden on Friday 2 April 2027. Both works were greeted as scandals.
Stravinsky’s ballet was first danced in Paris in May 1913. It depicts a pagan spring rite that ends with a girl dancing herself to death, set to rhythms nobody in the hall could count. Its premiere ended in a riot before the interval.
Bartók composed his opera in 1911 and could not get it staged for seven years. It is a single act for two singers and orchestra, after Perrault by way of Béla Balázs. A new wife opens seven doors in her husband’s castle, each hiding something she cannot unsee.
Bartók entered the score for two Hungarian competitions, and both juries rejected it as unperformable.
The two works share one unstaged evening on the Main Stage, for one night only. The Rite has been heard without its choreography for a century, and Bluebeard’s drama lies in the orchestra pit, where a set can add little.