Ariane et Barbe-bleue

Ariane et Barbe-bleue (Ariadne and Bluebeard) is an opera in three acts by Paul Dukas. The French libretto is adapted (with very few changes) from the symbolist play of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck, itself loosely based on the French literary tale La Barbe bleue by Charles Perrault.

Dukas had been impressed by Maeterlinck's play when it was first published in 1899. Maeterlinck had initially reserved the rights to use Ariane as a libretto for Edvard Grieg. When Grieg abandoned his plans to compose the opera, Maeterlinck offered it to Dukas instead. Dukas worked on the score between 1899 and 1906.

The work has often been compared to Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), also based on a Maeterlinck play; Debussy had virtually finished his score by the time Dukas began work on his. The names of Barbe-bleue's five former wives are taken from previous plays by Maeterlinck: Sélysette from Aglavaine et Sélysette (1896), Alladine from Alladine et Palomides (1894), Ygraine and Bellangère from La mort de Tintagiles (1894), and Mélisande from Pelléas et Mélisande. Dukas, who knew Debussy well, actually borrowed three bars from Debussy's opera to accompany the first mention of Mélisande, although the character is minor in Dukas' opera. Ariane takes her name from the legend of Ariadne and the Cretan labyrinth, although she combines the roles of both Ariadne and Theseus, who freed the captive Athenian virgins from the Minotaur just as Ariane liberates—or tries to liberate—the wives from Bluebeard.

It received its first performance at the Opéra Comique in Paris, on 10 May 1907. Performances in the latter half of the twentieth century were rare.

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