Bluebeard at Budapest Operetta and Musical Theatre

The story of the terrible Bluebeard, using up wife after wife, might be familiar to many in our audience. In Jacques Offenbach's colourful and eventful operetta, we can get to know this ‘marrying machine' from a surprising and humorous angle. The plot twists along like the best of authentic comedies do: the lovers keep losing and finding one another, misunderstandings, intrigues and shocking surprises follow one another. The tyrannic king of the country is desperate to find Hermia, the daughter he once disowned. The princess falls in love with a prince in disguise, but a peasant girl loves him too - and Bluebeard wants the peasant girl. And the plot thickens as Popolani, the alchemist finds it harder and harder to keep his secret.

Offenbach, the ‘father of the operetta? rarely makes an appearance on the stages of Budapest, so the premier of Bluebeard is bound to be an extraordinary experience. The brilliant, playful music radiating joi de vivre, as well as the complex and cinematic plot provide an exciting basis for a brand new adaptation that looks beyond the fairy tale-like events, and asks what this story of strange passions and stranger ambitions can mean to us today. The operetta is directed by a young director of the Katona József Theatre, Székely Kriszta, who, in addition to various successful prose pieces, also directed musical theatre: the contemporary Hungarian Opera Creative Connections, and multiple parts of the Opera House's Late Night series.

Authors

• Charles Ludlam