Nacht

Pre-concert talk with Lydia Benecke

Prior to the concerts on Sunday and Monday, criminal psychologist Lydia Benecke will be a guest of the Gürzenich Orchestra. In conversation (starting 45 minutes before each concert), she will offer a psychological perspective on Béla Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle and discuss the fascination of the forbidden, secrets in relationships, and the question of why people are sometimes drawn precisely to what frightens them.

Dark and cold is the castle where Bluebeard takes his young wife Judith. With the power of love, she wants to unlock her husband’s mysterious past, bringing light into this darkness and bridging chasms. Questions, however, are forbidden, and seven locked doors guard secrets. Judith begins opening them, one by one… Darkness also reigns in the human soul. It harbours instincts, fears, dreams and nightmares. In his only opera, Bluebeard’s Castle, Béla Bartók enters the chambers of human subconsciousness. The well-known fairy-tale about the bloodthirsty Bluebeard, proverbial murderer of women, forms the plot for a gripping psychodrama that draws the audience in like a magical undertow. Innocence, inner destitution, speechlessness and the inevitability of fate’s cruelties: the chamber drama of Judith and Bluebeard paints a portrait of humanity caught between love, hope, desperation and death. An operatic thriller that requires no stage to unfold its suggestive, mesmerizing imagery.