The Instability of Reality

Yvonne Gebauer: You have a long history with Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle …

Claus Guth: Bartók is a primal imprint for me. As a 13-year-old, I pulled the Bluebeard record from my parents' cupboard – probably by chance, because I found the cover with an incredibly gloomy castle so cool. The music immediately captivated me... when those first chords sound... magical and mysterious... Nothing came close to this listening experience for a long time.

It took a long time until you should finally stage the piece now...

That certainly has to do with my respect for the masterpieces, which I feel again and again... that this music perhaps doesn't need staging at all. And so it happened that I didn't think about Bluebeard for a long time. The piece resurfaced when I got into conversation with Jonas Kaufmann and began to think about the special nature of Erl, about the strong natural landscape and the possibility of engaging with a work here without distraction. Basically, the fascinating architecture of the Festspielhaus itself rises like a dark Bluebeard castle into the landscape.

Is the cast also part of these considerations?

Yes, certainly. It's a specific working situation here: Everyone lives in the same place, in the same residence, and you don't disperse after rehearsal. So it was very important to me to put together a familiar group. I immediately thought of my friend and companion Florian Boesch: the ideal Bluebeard for me. Then came Christel Loetzsch, with whom I already had a great artistic encounter at the Aix-en-Provence Festival – at a world premiere by Pascal Dusapin. With Barbara Hannigan I had a very intensive collaboration at a world premiere in Paris and have been in contact with her since then. We had been looking for a new joint project for a while. It's a stroke of luck that she had time at all. I find it interesting to go to such a special place in the middle of nature with a world star who jets from one world capital to the next...

We are now in the first week of rehearsals. How do you experience the situation on site?

Of all the operas I have staged so far, I feel most reminded of my work on Pelléas et Mélisande by Debussy. Here too, sometimes the unspoken is more interesting and far-reaching than what is said. And the sentences that are spoken stand like little riddles in the room – with infinitely many possibilities to interpret them.

Normally, as a director, I have an extremely precise plan for what I want to stage. Here, however, I try to force myself to leave some questions open. Of course I have a plan for the overall concept, and there are precise anchor points, e.g. for the development of the stage design over the course of the evening. Otherwise, however, I try to understand the respective scenes in rehearsal first based on the personalities and the tension in the room – in response to the words and the music. This is interesting research work that has a lot to do with theater work for me. With the small form that Bluebeard has – both in terms of brevity and personnel – a different intensity is possible in the work than normally in opera. There is not a single situation that could only be rehearsed with one of the two singers.

Continuation in the program booklet Duke Bluebeard's Castle / La Voix Humaine