A Comparative Analysis of Text and Music and Gender and Audience in Duke Bluebeard's Castle
Andrea Fabry discusses in her article, "A Comparative Analysis of Text and Music and Gender and Audience in Duke Bluebeard's Castle," the image of Bluebeard as a metaphor for gender relations. Bela Bartok's opera and its libretto represent a prime example of the metaphor that in turn can be found in a range of text types, from fairy tales through novels to films. In the article, Fabry analyzes Bartok's contribution to the metaphor, namely with his opera, Duke Bluebeard's Castle. She relates the opera to the text of the opera's libretto, written by film theoretician Bela Balazs, and places her analysis in the larger historical framework of audience research in modernity. The analysis reveals that in a pronounced misogynistic artistic climate of the time and working from a libretto whose tragic ending denies transcendence to the female character of the opera, Bartok's opera can be understood as the representation of simplistic domesticity where the real story remains un-mediated and unnarrated. Andrea Fabry, "A Comparative Analysis of Text and Music and Gender and Audience in Duke Bluebeard's Castle" page 2 of 8 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 1.4 (1999):
The Director-Research Concept of Stage Influences of Bela Bartok’s Opera "Duke Bluebeard’s Castle"
It was considered the director's approach to modern interpretations of Béla Bartók's opera "Duke Bluebeard's Castle". The research methodology is based on the basic provisions and concepts of musical directing, developed during the twentieth century and supplemented in the process of modern development of musical theater. There were analyzed recent studies of B. Bartok's opera and the work of playwright Béla Balázs. Based on this analysis, the direction of scientific work is clarified, which relates mainly to the intonation nature of the opera "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" and its compositional and dramatic features. The director's research concept of the stage incarnations of B. Bartok's opera opens a perspective for further scientific investigations. The basis on which the study is based is two opera performances in 2020- 2021, created with the participation of the world-renowned Ukrainian artists: Oksana Liniv, director of the opera evening "Judith" at the Bavarian State Opera; Andriy Zholdak, Ukrainian director that staged the play "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" at the Lyon Opera. In the analysis of these opera productions, three main directing principles have been identified, by means of which the material of the opera is actualized, in accordance with today's challenges: these are the principles of supplementing the performance, actualizing of the theme of the performance and visual detailing. There were considered the main fundamental concepts laid down by the authors of the work under study: composer Béla Bartok and libretto by author Béla Balázs, that became the basis for modern directorial interpretations. Emphasis is placed on the director's role in creating a directorial-research concept in the stage embodiment of the opera, which should find a connection between the ideological and artistic content of the opera and modern aspects of world society, which faces current issues of feminism and the role of women in the modern society. The question of gender and its showing on stage is also raised. The director's point of view on these phenomena is reflected in the stage incarnations of the opera "Duke Bluebeard’s Castle", modern productions of which are an indicator of the vector of development of the world music directing in the period 2020-2021. The novelty of the study lies in the selection of the main directing principles of work on the stage realization of B. Bartok's opera "The Duke of Bluebeard" based on the analysis of the productions of this opera in 2020-2021.
Representing Pornography: Feminism, Criticism, and Depictions of Female Violation
It is hardly necessary to rent I Spit on Your Grave or Tool Box Murders for your VCR in order to find images of sexuality contaminated by depersonalization or violence. As far back as Rabelais' Gargantua, for example, Panurge proposes to build a wall around Paris out of "the pleasure-twats of women [which] are much cheaper than stones": "the largest .. . in front" would be followed by "the medium-sized, and last of all, the least and smallest," all interlaced with "many horney joy-dinguses" so that fortification would be impregnable, except for the "ordure and excretions" of the flies it would doubtlessly attract.' Two centuries later, one of Rabelais' compatriots, the Marquis de Sade, described the rage of a sexually initiated daughter against a woman who refuses to consider her "pleasuretwat" "cheaper than stones." The Sadeian heroine first sodomizes her puritanical mother with an artificial penis, then has her infected with