"Midst the treasures of his palaces, dee-lighted to roam,
"Sister Anne with fair Fatima explored their new home!
"Home! Home! Sweet, sweet Home!
"There's no place like home when a maid's too poor to roam!"
It is later on in this act that we have the celebrated "Hope Motive," a
marvelous series of tone-pictures so novel and sensational that many box-
holders are expected to drop in at ten-thirty for the excitement of this
one brief scene. The motive wanders from key to key, hoping that in the end
it will hit off the right one. Fatima is hoping to find her ideal in
Bluebeard. Sister Anne is hoping to get a handsomer husband than Fatima's;
Blue-beard is hoping that Sister Anne will be his eighth spouse, and hoping
that there will be room to hang her in the hidden chamber, in which his
deceased wives are already pressed for room. All this is reflected in the
voices of the singers, together with many other emotions. They hope that
they will be able to come in just enough after or enough before, the usual
time of entrance, to rivet the conductor's attention; that they will be
preserved from falling into one another's parts; that they will not be
drowned by the orchestra; that they will be able to mount the dizzying
heights of a precipitous chromatic scale and manage an unrehearsed descent
in fifths on the half-notes--something that always causes intense joy in an
uneducated audience, especially when it is unsuccessful.
This scene runs the gamut of human emotion. The universe is mirrored in it.
First, one of the themes which we have noted, and then another, is sounded,
bringing to the bearer's mind all the crucial moments of Bluebeard's
strange, perverted, wife-pursuing life, as well as all the aspirations and
disappointments of Fatima's ambitious but checkered career. All the while
that this complicated web of motives is being woven out of unresolved
dissonances, the thirty first violins keep on playing the same three notes
in ever-precipitated rhythms. This is radical, audacious, and effective.
The notes are G flat, A sharp, and B natural, and the world reels as we
hear them. Everything is ours in this scene--orchestration, vocalization,
dramatization, characterization, gesticulation, auditory inflammation,
cacophonation, demoralization, adumbration.
There is an abrupt change of key after the "Honeymoon Motive" from sweetest
major to a piercing minor. This is exquisitely sincere and symbolic, though
it is a point too delicate to be perceived save by musicians who have
married but have not been able to hang up their wives. The libretto goes on
to say:
"The honeymoon passed when a letter one day
"Upon urgent affairs called Lord Bluebeard away--
"To inspection, sweet love, all my castle I leave,
"But remember with this key be on the _qui_vive_!
"It is not a natural key--think of that!
"My sword's in the key of one sharp, and that's flat!
"(Then he half drew his blade, and it was sharp and flat.)"
From this point the music-drama hastens tragically to a close. We have
Bluebeard's sudden (and feigned) journey, introduced by a pompous march of
great originality: