Based on the French folk legend, or conte populaire, as told by Charles Perrault, it lasts about an hour and deploys just two singing characters: Bluebeard (Kékszakállú) and his newest wife Judith (Judit); the two have just eloped and she is coming home to his castle for the first time.

48, was composed in 1911 (with modifications made in 1912 and a new ending added in 1917) and first performed on 24 May 1918 at the Royal Hungarian Opera House in Budapest.

A revision of the UE vocal score in 1963 added a new German translation by Wilhelm Ziegler, but seems not to have corrected any errata.

Bartók was motivated to complete the opera in 1911 by the closing date of the Ferenc Erkel Prize competition, for which it was duly entered.

The Rózsavölgyi judges, after reviewing the composition, decided that the work (with only two characters and a single location) was not dramatic enough to be considered in the category for which it was entered: theatrical music.

In 1913 Balázs produced a spoken performance at which Bartók played some piano pieces on a separate part of the program.

Bartók attended rehearsals and reportedly sided with the new Bluebeard, Mihály Székely, over the new conductor Sergio Failoni, who was insisting on fidelity to the printed score.

The production was conducted by Sergio Failoni and starred Mihály Székely in the title role and Ella Némethy as Judith.

The Teatro di San Carlo mounted the opera for the first time under Ferenc Fricsay on 19 April 1951[3] with Mario Petri and Ira Malaniuk.

[5][6][7] The first fully staged American production was at the New York City Opera on 2 October 1952 with conductor Joseph Rosenstock and singers James Pease and Catherine Ayres.

Ernest Ansermet conducted the performance, which featured Renée Gilly as Judith and Lucien Lovano as Bluebeard.

The first staged production of the work in France was at the Opéra national du Rhin on 29 April 1954 with Heinz Rehfuss in the title role, Elsa Cavelti as Judith, and conductor Ernest Bour.

The London première took place on 16 January 1957 at the Rudolf Steiner Theatre during the English tour of Scottish composer Erik Chisholm directing the University of Cape Town Opera Company whose Désirée Talbot was Judith.

The work was first performed in Japan on 29 April 1954 by the Youth Group of the Fujiwara Opera Company (under conductor Yoichiro Fukunaga with piano accompaniment).

The opera's Austrian premiere took place at the Salzburg Festival on 4 August 1978 with conductor George Alexander Albrecht, Walter Berry and Katalin Kasza.

[13] The Taiwanese première, directed and conducted by Tseng Dau-Hsiong, took place in the National Theater in Taipei on 30 December 2011.

All is now sunlit, but blood has stained the riches, watered the garden, and grim clouds throw blood-red shadows over Bluebeard's kingdom.

The Hungarian conductor István Kertész believed that we should not relate this to the fairy tale on which it was based, but that Bluebeard was Bartók himself, and that it portrays his personal suffering and his reluctance to reveal the inner secrets of his soul, which are progressively invaded by Judith.

While Kertész felt Judith is a villain in this sense, Christa Ludwig, who had sung the role, disagreed, stating that she only voices all that she has heard about Bluebeard.

In a broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera on 14 February 2015, she stated that it does not matter who Judith is; she symbolises a human being who has to face up to all the fears that she brings from her past.

The stage directions call also for occasional ghostly sighs that seemingly emanate from the castle itself when some of the doors are opened.

The most salient characteristic of the music from Bluebeard's Castle is the importance of the minor second, an interval whose dissonance is used repeatedly in both slow and fast passages to evoke aching sadness/disquiet or danger/shock respectively.

Overall the music is not atonal, although it is often polytonal, with more than one key center operating simultaneously (e.g. the leadup to the climactic opening of the fifth door).

The opera starts in a mode of F♯, modulating towards C in the middle of the piece (tonally, the greatest possible distance from F♯), before returning to F♯ towards the end.

A reasonably faithful version in French is that of Natalia and Charles Zaremba (L'Avant-scène opéra [fr], 1992)[clarification needed].