Bluebeard - Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880)

Leaving behind the myths of the Trojan War for European folklore, Offenbach invented an entire burlesque world around Prince Bluebeard, a merry widower of the worst kind.Everything is a pretext for laughter and mockery in this French comic opera, for the man who made a specialty of musical and social caricature. Despite the overture and first act that pretend to introduce a charming pastoral tale, the counts, king, prince and counsellors clash in frenzied arias on subjects such as life and death, male-female relations, the brutality of the powerful and the spinelessness of the courtiers. Drawn by lot, the mischievous peasant Boulotte is granted the honour (and the misfortune) of marrying the wife-killing prince. However, rest assured, shepherdesses and gypsies, all the dead women are very much alive and - unexpectedly for its time in 1866 - feminism wins the day. Opera sung in French (surtitles in French and English).