Cincinnati Opera's double bill of Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung gets the cinematic treatment from director Robert Lepage, who staged it originally for the Canadian Opera Company.

        “Lepage has always been interested in the visual perspective,” says Francois Racine over breakfast at First Watch last week. He directs the Cincinnati production that opens Thursday.

        “In Erwartung, there's a lot of cinematic imagery. The first images are surprising; the characters are leaning on the side in the acrobatic way, and you realize the perspective has been shifted.

        “This kind of weirdness in the characters and their movement becomes a fascination. It's as if you were inside the Woman's head, and you're feeling all the panic. In that sense, it's close to cinema.”

        Mr. Racine, 46, a native of Montreal, has been involved with the production since it was created in 1992. At the time, he was an apprentice with the Canadian Opera Company, and asked to work with Mr. Lepage, aware of his reputation as a theater and film director.

        “Everybody got involved in the process, including the singers and the maestro. Everyone had ideas; it went on for about a month of rehearsal, and we built the show that way. It's hasn't really changed since then.”
       

Merging music, drama

               He has staged the double bill nine times, from Edinburgh, Scotland, to Hong Kong.

        “In Edinburgh, at the end of the show, there was a silence in the audience — and then boom! People were stunned; they were shocked,” he says.

        The production works, he says, because of the unity of music, drama and scenic design.

        “When you see Bluebeard or Erwartung, you get a sense that the musical aspects are enhanced by the drama and the visual is possible because of the music,” he says. “Something like Erwartung by Arnold Schoenberg, which is difficult music for the average listener, becomes stunning.”
       

Almost 12 tone

               Although the two operas were written two years apart — Schoenberg's Erwartung in 1909 and Bartok's only opera, Bluebeard's Castle, in 1911 — they are very different musically. Bartok's music is angular and chromatic, but much of the melody is based in Hungarian folk music.

        Schoenberg, infamous to concertgoers for his 12-tone music, wrote Erwartung (which means Expectation) in a middle period called “expressionist” — atonal, but not quite 12-tone.

        His half-hour monodrama centers on one character, the unnamed Woman, who wanders through a forest in search of her lover. She discovers his murdered body, and the rest of her monologue recalls their love through a veil of nightmarish terror, jealousy, confusion and desire.

        “Traditional tonal order could scarcely have met the demands of such a subject,” writes Oliver Neighbour in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

        As in the movies, the scores become background music for a psychological thriller.
       

Seven doors

               The plots reflect the period early in the 20th-century, dominated by the writings of Sigmund Freud and the angst-filled art of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.

        Bluebeard's Castle librettist Bela Balazs took his plot from the fairy tale by Charles Perrault. In it, Judith, the new bride of Duke Bluebeard, arrives at his castle and finds seven doors. She insists they be opened, and Bluebeard reluctantly hands her a key to each door. The first five contain: a torture chamber, bloody weapons, jewels, a garden and Bluebeard's kingdom.

        He begs her not to open the last two, but she continues. The sixth has a lake of tears, and the seventh reveals three richly dressed women: his former wives.

        Says Mr. Racine, “You have two characters onstage, they're in this dungeon, this box. It's all about their relationship. In that sense, I find it's strong theater.”

        One of the technical feats of this production is the “pool of tears,” a 600-gallon pool of water that will collect on Music Hall's stage.

        “Off to the side, there is a deeper pool next to the right wall, what we call a plug,” Mr. Racine explains. “The three wives swim under water, and rise out from the deeper pool.”

        The pool will also appear in Erwartung.

        “The power of it is its stillness; it's like dead water. It goes with this feeling. (The Woman) will see blood in there, so it is used as a metaphor, in a way.”
       

Surreal visions

               The three actors who play the wives in Bluebeard, will play three visions in Erwartung, the hallucinations of the Woman. The visions are a psychiatrist, dressed in a Freudian white coat, the Woman's lover and his mistress.

        “In a slow motion, the analyst will shift in his chair and start moving to the side,” Mr. Racine says. “A trap in the wall opens and the lover sinks out of it, and leans down exactly in the position where he was killed. A branch sticks out of the wall. It's all done in motion with the music, so it's surreal.”

        Then the visions will sink away. The psychiatrist rolls back in his chair and the lover moves back into the wall.

        “You know when you have a nightmare and you feel like you can't run away fast enough? That's exactly the feeling that it creates in you,” Mr. Racine says.
       

A technical challenge

               Technically, it's a complicated show, involving intricate lighting and sets for two separate operas.

        For the director, staging can be challenging, too.

        “Lepage has this kind of Japanese style. He's influenced by Oriental arts, so his movements are very stylized,” Mr. Racine says. “It's subtle. It's hard to get that into the characters, to connect.”

        In Erwartung, the biggest challenge is with the singing.

        “It's getting the singer comfortable with that, and then working with the inner visions of the character, so she will give it to us,” he says. “It is logical, but it is totally irrational. It's a delirium, but it's a continuous line of avoiding reality.”

        He laughs. “There are so many levels, you feel like you're an analyst trying to explain your point of view to the actor.”

        The production, he says, combines great theater with compelling music.

        “It's opera at its best, where the action, where everything melds together. It's the whole art form,” he says.
       

IF YOU GO
               What: Cincinnati Opera double bill: Bela Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle and Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung. Robert Lepage, production; Francois Racine, director; Stephane Deneve, conductor; Michael Levine, costumes and sets; Thomas Hase, lighting; Alan Held (Duke Bluebeard); Susan Parry (Judith); Inga Nielsen, (the Woman); Pam Johnson, Noam Markus and Mark Johnson (actors).

        When: 8 p.m. Thursday and Saturday

        Where: Music Hall

        Tickets: $12-$90. 241-2742 or cincinnatiopera.com

        Read the review: Friday on Cincinnati.Com, keyword: opera

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