Chapter 2

"He also had an unfortunate predilection for leading unattached ladies to the altar, constantly marrying wives, six wives, successively one after another, on a regular railroad of matrimonial velocity!

"But, finding them _in_toto_, all very so-so, determined to turn each one of them into a good woman by cutting off her head!

"As a punishment for the most unmitigatedly determined and persevering female curiosity!"

(With naivete') "But to our tale!"

The "tale" introduces the lovely, luckless Fatima, sitting at her cottage window, dreaming the dreams of girl-hood. She has received Bluebeard's message of love, and is awaiting his coming as the hero of her heart's romance. This "_Traum_" theme is almost precisely like the "Guileless Fool Motive" of "Parsifal," and the application to Fatima is unmistakable.

ARIA

"Within sight of his castle, a short hour's ride, "An impecunious old lady lived, two marriageable and impecunious daughters beside, "Whom Bluebeard had seen and at love's highest pitch "Sent to say he would marry, he didn't care which! "Sent to say he would marry, he didn't care which!"

We now have Bluebeard's triumphal journey toward Fatima's cottage, from whence he is to bring her as his bride. If this brutal bigamist had any preference it was for Anne, Fatima's younger sister, but he knew that it was only a matter of a few weeks anyway, so there is not the slightest hint in the music of anything but the tempered joy with which the accustomed bridegroom approaches the familiar altar.

We have the "Blaubart Motiv" again here, and we must not be disturbed to find it heralded thus:

(noisily and fussily: Repeated deep notes)

We find the same thing later on. This is merely an introductory phrase, the "_Losgehenlassen_Motiv_" (See Me Getting Ready to Go Motive). Here we note Wagner's sublime regard for truth and realism. Does Bluebeard go--does anybody go--without getting ready to go? Certainly not; yet they have gone for years when-ever they liked, in the shiftless operas of the Italian school, without the least preparation. They would even come back before they went, if it were any more pleasing, pictorial, or melodious. It took a heroic genius like that of Wagner to return to the simple, eternal truth of things. We have a striking example here of Wagner's power of modifying and inverting a motive, carrying it from key to key, giving it forwards and backwards, upside down and other-end-to, according to the feeling he wishes it to express, whether it be love, rage, desire, impatience, ardor, or what not. The "_Losgehenlassen_Motiv_" is simplicity itself when it first appears in C major (see motive). But Bluebeard's exits are many --partly because his entrances are so numerous--and for every exit this motive conveys a new meaning. Blue-beard is always getting ready to go, but with what different purposes in mind! He goes for pastime and for passion; he goes for wooing and for wantoning; for marriage and for murder. He goes in D sharp with pomp, pride, and power, and we can distinguish the tread of his servants' feet, the clatter of arms, and the hurrying together of his escort and retinue. He goes again in B flat minor, stealthily and unattended, the orchestra giving the motive with muted violins and subdued brass. We seem to hear naught but the soft pad-pad of his felt bedroom slippers on the marble steps, and we murmur to one another: "What does he propose to do now?

We have next the "Dragon," "Elephant," and "Tiger" _motive_: the "Dragon Motive" being intentionally reminiscent of the one in "Siegfried."

There is not in the entire range of modern music anything more impressive than this splendid journey of a barbaric prince toward his chosen victim. No stage picture could be more dazzling than the one brought before the mind's eye in the majestic, munificent measures that herald the pageant:

ARIA

"And true to his message the lover did come With cymbals and horns and a big Indian drum!

The measures that follow these describe the tiger swinging on behind the triumphal cab. This is a delicious whimsicality, and the music is as gay and sportive as anything in "Die Meistersinger."

ARIA

"And an elephant, huge, to his cab... was confined."....

How the character of Bluebeard stands out in these passages--Bluebeard, morbid, erotic, megalophonous megalomaniac, with his grandiose air and outlandish accoutrements!

It seems odd that rumors of his matrimonial past had not reached Fatima, for the libretto tells us (authorized opera-house edition, not the one sold on the sidewalk) that his castle was only an hour's ride distant. In any event, one would think the sight of the lover's approach, with lions and elephants in attendance and a tiger hanging on behind the chariot, might have shown Fatima that, although Bluebeard might be admirable as an advance agent for a menagerie, he would hardly be a pleasant fireside companion. However, it was the old story! Moved by love, ambition, poverty, ennui, or what not, Fatima lost her head, as all Bluebeard's previous wives had done, both before and after marriage, and left the humble home of her childhood for the unknown castle. Simple chords give us this information thus:

(Semplice, piano for the Humble Home; Agitato, fortissimo for the Unknown Castle.)

Then comes the "_Liebesgruss_Motiv_" (Love's Greeting Motive). No single instrument can give this exquisite theme. The whole symphony of human nature seems to rise and spread its wings in a glorious harmony of pairs and twos of a kind melting in passionate octaves and triplets. The groping, ardent, distracted, thwarted, but ever protesting bass, set against a coquettish, evasive, yet timidly yielding treble; the occasional introduction of a mysterious minor in the midst of a well-authenticated major, gives us an intimation that wooing is not an exact science.

Next come the "_Hochzeitsreise_und_Flitter_Wochen_Motive_" (The Bridal Tour and Honeymoon motives). Here are harp _glissandos_; here are voices soaring, voices roaring, voices darting, voices floating, weaving an audible embroidery of sound. They make up the most exquisitely tender scene of the opera, and arc especially interesting to us in America, since they are built upon one of our national songs. This can only be regarded as a flattering recognition of our support of German opera in this country.

ARIA

"Midst the treasures of his palaces, dee-lighted to roam,

"Sister Anne with fair Fatima explored their new home! "Home! Home! Sweet, sweet Home! "There's no place like home when a maid's too poor to roam!"

It is later on in this act that we have the celebrated "Hope Motive," a marvelous series of tone-pictures so novel and sensational that many box- holders are expected to drop in at ten-thirty for the excitement of this one brief scene. The motive wanders from key to key, hoping that in the end it will hit off the right one. Fatima is hoping to find her ideal in Bluebeard. Sister Anne is hoping to get a handsomer husband than Fatima's; Blue-beard is hoping that Sister Anne will be his eighth spouse, and hoping that there will be room to hang her in the hidden chamber, in which his deceased wives are already pressed for room. All this is reflected in the voices of the singers, together with many other emotions. They hope that they will be able to come in just enough after or enough before, the usual time of entrance, to rivet the conductor's attention; that they will be preserved from falling into one another's parts; that they will not be drowned by the orchestra; that they will be able to mount the dizzying heights of a precipitous chromatic scale and manage an unrehearsed descent in fifths on the half-notes--something that always causes intense joy in an uneducated audience, especially when it is unsuccessful.

This scene runs the gamut of human emotion. The universe is mirrored in it. First, one of the themes which we have noted, and then another, is sounded, bringing to the bearer's mind all the crucial moments of Bluebeard's strange, perverted, wife-pursuing life, as well as all the aspirations and disappointments of Fatima's ambitious but checkered career. All the while that this complicated web of motives is being woven out of unresolved dissonances, the thirty first violins keep on playing the same three notes in ever-precipitated rhythms. This is radical, audacious, and effective. The notes are G flat, A sharp, and B natural, and the world reels as we hear them. Everything is ours in this scene--orchestration, vocalization, dramatization, characterization, gesticulation, auditory inflammation, cacophonation, demoralization, adumbration.

There is an abrupt change of key after the "Honeymoon Motive" from sweetest major to a piercing minor. This is exquisitely sincere and symbolic, though it is a point too delicate to be perceived save by musicians who have married but have not been able to hang up their wives. The libretto goes on to say:

"The honeymoon passed when a letter one day "Upon urgent affairs called Lord Bluebeard away-- "To inspection, sweet love, all my castle I leave, "But remember with this key be on the _qui_vive_! "It is not a natural key--think of that! "My sword's in the key of one sharp, and that's flat! "(Then he half drew his blade, and it was sharp and flat.)"

From this point the music-drama hastens tragically to a close. We have Bluebeard's sudden (and feigned) journey, introduced by a pompous march of great originality:

MARCH (Pomposo. Decrescendo.....sempre p pp ppp)

Then we have the fatal curiosity of Fatima and her sister Anne. We must extenuate here, nor aught set down in malice, remembering that Wagner knew only the women of his own day, before the sex was uplifted and purified by the vote, and he naturally depicted them with the man-engendered vices that were then a part of their unhappy heritage. This "_Neugierde_Motiv_" (Curiosity Motive) is made up of agitated, sharply accentuated sixteenth notes played with incredible vivacity and culminating in a terrifying orchestral crash where entrance is made into the hidden chamber, with its famous tableau so eloquent of the polygamous instinct of man; an instinct only kept in subjection by the most stringent laws and the most militant domestic discipline.

ANTI-FEMINIST ARIA

"But Fatima said, 'To the keyhole let's creep, "There can be no harm just in one little peep! "We are women--besides, there are none to behold us! "If he wished us to leave it, he shouldn't have told us!'"

It is these inexcusable lines which have caused the Feminist party to boycott (and perhaps rightly) any opera-house in which this drama is given, urging that they contain an insult which can be wiped out only with blood or ballots. I sympathize with this feeling, yet, as I said before, there are extenuating circumstances. Wagner was born a hundred years ago. In his time the hand of woman, though white, was flabby and inert from years of darning, patching, stirring the pot, buttoning and unbuttoning, feeding and spanking man's perennial progeny. He had no conception how that frail hand would be steadied and strengthened by dropping the ballot into the box; how curiosity, vanity, parasitic coquetry, lack of logic, overweening interest in millinery and inability to balance a check-book--how these weaknesses would vanish under the inspiring influences of municipal politics; therefore I feel disposed to forgive him, and to attribute to him, not absolute and deliberate insult, so much as a kind of patronizing persiflage. In this case, however, feminists will say that the great Wagner undoubtedly and regrettably overreached himself.

Here is just a hint of the theme; a paltry, parasitic, mid-Victorian motive.

CURIOSITY ARIA

Curiosity conquer'd, the Key was applied, And with thunder most awful the door opened wide.

Now comes the much discussed "Chorus of Headless Wives," which is a distinct prophecy of Debussy. You have noted in late musical criticisms allusions to the "ghosts of themes" used in "Pelleas and Melisande,"-- "Sound-wraiths wandering in air." Here we have the same thing and employed with exquisite appropriateness. The ladies hanging in the secret chamber are mere bodies, their heads being decidedly off stage. When the door is opened the wives begin to sing _a_la'_ Debussy, the ghostly effect being secured by the fact that it is not, of course, the _present_bodies_, but the _absent_heads_ that are supposed to be singing. The melodic wraiths float from the key of G flat--I use "key" in the old-fashioned sense, for the word, like the thing itself, is fast disappearing--through one and four sharps back to two and three flats, employing all signatures but that of C major. Six sets of severed vocal organs meandering in space would hardly use the natural key!

Then we have the opening of the mysterious door; the unexpected return of Bluebeard; the hysterics of the ill-fated sisters, with plenty of shrieking and swooning motives; and then the celebrated "_Hammelfleisch_" or "Mutton" motive, where Sister Anne, from her post in the high tower, observes for a long time nothing but sheep.

"But, alas! Sister Anne, only saw a few sheep, then, nothing!"

Now there is the thrilling and opportune arrival of the Brothers on their high horses; the mortal combat; the death of the villain by the "_Schwert_Motiv_"; the joyous funeral march; and then the superb duet between Mustapha, the eldest brother, and Fatima, the ill-fated heroine. We get astonishing color contrasts in the last scene, as each character is allotted a different set of instruments as accompaniment. Bluebeard has six sackbuts, a trumpet, a _viol_d'amore_, and a Chinese temple gong; Fatima, three lutes, an arch-lute, and a pianola; Mustapha a bass-drum and a harpsichord; and Sister Anne a pair of virginals. (An exquisite touch, this!) To Bluebeard's servants are allotted barrel-organs, accordions, jews'-harps, mandolins, bagpipes, and triangles. All this gives a tonal splendor that simply beggars description.

When the combat is over and Bluebeard's immense body is prone and lifeless in the dust, Wagner suddenly leaves tragedy and gives us a melodious duet between the brother and sister on the theme: "What can equal a brother's love?" This duet and _finale_ unite to form a masterpiece; a deserved rebuke to any cynic who may consider that Wagner could not adopt the enervating methods of the Italian school if he desired. His cadenzas here are miracles of compressed technique, and, although the melody is conventional, the music itself is never for a moment simple or intelligible.

Suggested arrangement of orchestra for presentation of Bluebeard------ ============================================================================== First violins (union) Prompter's Private First violins (non-union) Parlour _____________________ Conductor ______________________________________________________________________________ Organ Horns Flutes Harps Pianola Second Violins ______________________________________________________________________________ Lutes Mandolins Arch Lutes Kettledrums Battery Zithers Mouth Organs Megaphones Chinese Temple Gong Guitars Double Bassoons Banjos ______________________________________________________________________________ Tuba Trombones Woodwinds Drums Bagpipes Sackbuts Triangles Virginals Viol d'Amore B-flat Cornet Exit to Fire Escape Accordions ==============================================================================

Fatima, singing actress (whose part here is written almost entirely in appoggiaturas), and Mustapha, baritone, hold the stage; the one who draws the largest salary occupying the center and the other standing wherever he can find room. Mustapha, taking care to descend as low in his scale as Fatima ascends high in hers, and vying with her in exceeding the speed-limit, sings "Oh ra-ha-ha-hap-ture !" several times, varied by "What can e-he-he-he-qual a brother's love?" Then, using the same words, they sing as much as possible in unison to the end of the scene, which closes with a fantasy of capricious arabesques and a series of trills on notes seldom heard from any but the high-est-priced human lips.

Ah! What joy!.....What rap---ture! What can e---qual a brother's love? Oh joy!........Oh joy!.........Oh, joy!........ (Cadenza according to the skill of the performer.)

Whether Wagner followed the Italian school in this case in sarcasm, or because he believed it was fitting, considering the subject, can never be known (though we remember that he was at one time a great admirer of Bellini); but the result is a melodious and restful ending to a tragedy which, were it carried to the end in unbroken gloom, mystery, and carnage, would be too terrible and too vast for human endurance and human comprehension. Yet let us be just! The libretto is full of barbaric brutalities; it is replete with blood and carnage; but, although Bluebeard was emphatically not a nice person, and his vices cannot be condoned, and although Fatima was wrong in marrying for an establishment and most culpable in yielding to her curiosity, still, virtue triumphs in the end. The story, as a whole, is fairly murmurous with morality, sending young men and women to their homes impressed with the risks and snares involved in bigamy and polygamy, and giving them an added sense of the security and gravity of the marriage tie when sparingly used.