Page "Béla Bartók" Paragraph 13

In 1911, Bartók wrote what was to be his only opera, Bluebeard's Castle, dedicated to Márta.

He entered it for a prize by the Hungarian Fine Arts Commission, but they rejected his work as not fit for the stage ( Chalmers 1995, 93 ).

In 1917 Bartók revised the score for the 1918 première, and rewrote the ending.

Following the 1919 revolution, he was pressured by the new Soviet government to remove the name of the librettist Béla Balázs from the opera ( Chalmers 1995, 123 ), as he was blacklisted and had left the country for Vienna.

Bluebeard's Castle received only one revival, in 1936, before Bartók emigrated.

For the remainder of his life, although he was passionately devoted to Hungary, its people and its culture, he never felt much loyalty to the government or its official establishments.