Fortner was asked by Karl-Heinz Stroux to write incidental music for a performance of Lorca's play Bodas de sangre in Hamburg in the early 1950s.

[3] Bluthochzeit, a "literary opera" like Alban Berg's Wozzeck and Lulu, is driven by the action, as the composer comments: "The compulsion of the words drives the music."

[2] Giselher Klebe noted in an introduction to the performance in Düsseldorf that Fortner, who was exposed to twelve-tone technique rather late in life, used the restriction of its rules to heighten expressiveness.

The opera was chosen to open the Opernhaus Düsseldorf with a performance on 12 October 1986 by the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, conducted by Hans Wallat and staged by Kurt Horres.

[1] Bluthochzeit was revived in January 2013 with a new production at the Wuppertal Opera, directed by Christian von Götz and conducted by Hilary Griffiths.