33 1/3 Collective's version of Bluebeard is not inspired by the original fairy-tale, but Bartok's shaping of the tale of a murderous husband into an early twentieth century opera. The lack of live, visible performers - aside from three men who interact sporadically with the giant cube which becomes the canvas for the remarkable projections - lends this musical the atmosphere of a scenographic set-piece, a bravura display of modern technology's ability to deceive the eye: requiring a knowledge of Bartok's story, it uses spectacular projection to examine the psychology of the seven rooms through which Bluebeard leads his wife.
Despite the incredible video - at one point, a floating chair passes across a lake of tears, possibly real but impossible to tell - the narrative is blunt and the emphasis is on mood rather than explication. The sequences are clearly marked - coins for the room of wealth, the noble's lands in a state of warfare - but the limited spoken text wanders around the point, making generalisations rather than focussing the meaning.
This Bluebeard, being a copy of a version of a fairy-tale possibly based on an earlier saint's myth or the life of a serial killing nobleman, Gilles de Rais, sacrifices much of the emotional kick of Bartok's opera - his Bluebeard is a weeping tyrant, while Perrault's seventeenth century version is a wife-killer who gets his. It's more interesting as a meditation on Bartok's themes, even if these are sometimes unclear and an example of how the meaning of a story, expressed through the medium, is shifted by different eras.
When Perrault wrote his version in 1697, France was still in the grip of the ancien regime, and the aristocracy retained a potent symbolism: the murderous nobleman was a threat as familiar as today's corrupted Old Etonian. Bluebeard was a killer, his dead wives stuffed in the basement and his defeat, at the hands of his wife's family, was justice served. By the time of Bartok, and the various revolutions that shook Europe and weakened the aristocratic hand.
Perrault's Bluebeard is not a mere figure of fantasy - if he was inspired by the stories about the real life Gilles de Rais, the historical Bluebeard lived around two hundred years before Perrault, a relatively short period in the pre-industrial age and just enough time to ferment the details from facts into legend. He represents a corrupted version of authority still powerful: for all the fanciful happy ending, Bluebeard's monstrosity is a potential allegory for the impact of aristocratic influence on the people.
Bartok seems far more sympathetic to poor Bluebeard - his wives aren't even dead, just locked up in a dungeon wearing fancy clothes. Fair enough, his wife Judith still ends: she won't have it. Later, Angela Carter would go back to Perrault to fashion a feminist fable The Bloody Chamber. Bartok, however, is blaming the victim and Judith's insatiable curiosity leads to her downfall.
Since the wikipedia entry notes that there is some confusion about the number of Bluebeard's wives, it is possible that Judith is not the same wife as Carter's more feisty heroine. Or maybe Bluebeard started off in the Bartok style, just chaining his wives up in dungeons, before graduating to hacking them up.
Since 33 1/3 explicitly use Bartok as a reference, however, it's worth considering whether the anti-feminism of the opera continues into their multi-media extravaganza. The baddie doesn't really turn up - Judith is in a few of the projections, and perhaps the serious voice-over is Bluebeard: the piece is more interested in representing the various rooms, leading the audience through them. Judith and Bluebeard become cyphers for the audience experience.
Bartok's age still had an attitude towards genuine blue-bloods - the revolutions may have shaken them, they were still knocking about, causing shit and insisting on privilege. The emasculated Bluebeard (not that stabbing wives is some great sign of masculinity, but it's tougher than sobbing over them) echoes Perrault's version and his new weakness is telling. Once upon a time, Bluebeard got to kill with impunity. By the beginning of the twentieth century, he can't even prevent his wife flooding the castle with light.
33 1/3 disappear him: the rooms are more important, their psychological symbolism is all. This isn't always clear enough and the brilliance of the projections is sufficiently showy that it discourages deep meditation. The sudden appearance of ducks is a bit too comic: 33 1/3 don't quite manage to get the meditative atmosphere.
Having said that, writing about it has made me want to see it again. It deserves a great deal of thought...
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