Bluebeard in Dallas

Ever since handsome young Hungarian-born Conductor Antal Dorati went to Dallas four years ago, he has labored to make his new countrymen conscious of one of his old: the late great Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. Season after season he pounded Bartok at Dallas--and Dallas music lovers had almost adopted Bartok as their own. Dorati would be leaving (to take Dimitri Mitropoulos' podium in Minneapolis next season-), but he had promised himself to do something that people would remember--and connect with the Dallas Symphony. He succeeded. On NBC's Orchestras of the Nation broadcast last week, Dorati conducted the U.S. premiere of Bartok's opera, Bluebeard's Castle.

Bartok composed his one-act, two-singer Bluebeard (one of his three theater works) in 1911. It was not produced until 1918, and then it met with no success. The plot was deadly dull: nothing but Bluebeard and fourth wife Judith walking from one door of the castle's great hall to another, until all its seven doors are unlocked. But neither radio listeners nor Dallas concertgoers (who saw a concert version) had to worry about that. Bluebeard's doors gave Bartok plenty of chance for variety, e.g., a broad, majestic theme in full brass when Judith opens the door looking out upon Bluebeard's rich manorial lands; harp arpeggios when Judith comes upon door No. 6 and the pool of water signifying the vale of tears. Hungarian Bass Desire Ligeti and Soprano Olga Forrai had few standout moments; Bluebeard, with its conversational style of recitative and declamation, reminded some, of Debussy's Pelleas and Melisande. But Bartok's music, less fiercely dissonant and rhythmic, but more melodic than some of his later works, was indeed something that people would remember.

Said Conductor Dorati: "This piece I can--how you say it?--underwrite without hesitation. We could have done Beethoven's Seventh, but who the hell cares any more to hear an orchestra play that?"

*When Mitropoulos goes to Manhattan to share the conducting of the New York Philharmonic-Symphony with Leopold Stokowski.

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