NY Philharmonic - Bluebeard's Castle et al.

Last night I attended the last of several performances by the New York Philharmonic of the second program in the "Hungarian Echoes" festival that is being "curated" by guest conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.  During the first half of the program, they performed Ligeti's "Concert Românesc," a relatively lighthearted dance suit in the style of Bartok's Dance Suite, albeit more "popular" and less "dissonant" than the earlier Bartok.  A horn soloist in the balcony was a featured attraction of this piece, well coordinated with the stage.  Then they performed Haydn's Symphony No. 7, Le Midi (the middle of the three early symphonies, morning noon and night), which is marked by numerous solo opportunities for principal players, especially violin and cello, masterfully rendered by NYP concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and principal cellist Carter Brey.  In both pieces, Salonen led lively performances with a great deal more wit than I heard last week in the first program of this series.

But the main event came after intermission, with Bartok's one-act opera, Duke Bluebeard's Castle, based on an old folk tale about the seductive Duke who marries them, kills them, and keeps their ghosts in his haunted castle, with its mysterious doors. 

This is a two-character piece.  The latest wife, Judith, was sung by Michelle DeYoung, quite capably for all that I could hear, although due to the peculiar acoustics of Avery Fisher Hall and my placement with respect to the soloist (I was sitting in tier 1, box 4, seat 4), her sound was sometimes muffled or covered by the orchestra. I've heard her sing before, always impressively, and I suspect those better situated heard her just fine.

Bluebeard was sung by the emerging young Hungarian baritone Gábor Bretz (age 34), and for me he was the discovery of the evening.  What a voice!  What a presence! He was ideally cast as the seductive but sadistic duke, suave and satanic... and never a problem in hearing him.  When he cut loose in the big moments late in the opera, the effect was stunning.

Salonen led an intensely dramatic but slower-paced performance than the norm.  (The program book says the piece lasts 52 minutes, but I thought it went more like an hour.)  Actor Richard Easton read the prologue in place of the indisposed Marthe Keller. 

I happened by chance to be sitting next to a young conductor who said he had attempted to put on a production of this opera but had been stymied by the composer's son, Peter Bartok, now in his 90s, who guards the copyright and vetoes any staged production not to his liking.  This may partially explain the work's underperformance in opera houses, a situation that could change in a few years when the copyright on this work, written during the period 1911-1918, finally expires.  (Unless, of course, Congress again bows to the importunings of companies whose fortunes rest on controlling intellectual property rights, and passes another extension...  Perhaps a case now pending before the Supreme Court may undercut their ability to do this, at least with respect to works that had lapsed from copyright protection prior to the last extension.)