The opera The hand of fate (Die glückliche Hand, op. 18) is composed of a single act divided into four scenes, with a libretto written by Schönberg in 1909. The central theme is the desperate solitude of the subject, who despite attempts is unable to change his external reality: to emphasize this aspect there is only one male singer on stage. The fortunate hand then recounts the misery of the male protagonist, a failed hero in pursuit of an illusory happiness.

New TCBO Production with Teatro Massimo  di Palermo

Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, is a one act opera with a libretto by Béla Balàzs composed in 1911, it is considered a masterpiece of Bartòk’s maturity. Primarily influenced by Impressionism and partly by expressionism then at its early beginnings, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle represents one of Bartòk’s deepest poetic motifs: the human soul that is mysterious and unfathomable, symbolized by the sinister and gloomy Bluebeard’s castle. Not even love succeeds in exploring it unless on the condition that you recognize the same oblivion, annihilation, within a solipsistic presence, blind and tyrannical.

CONDUCTOR

CONCEPTION

RICCI/FORTE

DIRECTOR

EIN MANN/BLUEBEARD

JUDIT

Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951) was an Austrian composer belonging to the musical expressionist style.

Among his most significant works are Erwartung (Expectation) and Die glückliche Hand (The fortunate hand): the central theme of the subject’s desperate solitude is told through a form of “total” representation where sound, colour, word and action merge to create a single perspective plane

Béla Bartók (1881-1945), Hungarian composer and pianist, his early musical career was influenced by the late-romanticism style (above all in Brahms, Wagner and R. Strauss), and later by his deep connection to popular Hungarian folk music.

Among the first important compositions to accompany his stylistic maturity, are his only opera in one act A kékszakállú herceg vára (Duke Bluebeard’s Castle) and the Allegro Barbaro for piano