BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE AND K

Matthew Lutton OAM. Artistic Director Adelaide Festival 2027

Bela Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle and Barrie Kosky's K based on Franz Kafla's The Trial

Adelaide Festival. February 26 - March 14 2027. Bookings at 1300 393 404.

Preview Feature by Peter Wilkins

Romeo Castelluci's BLUE BEARD'S CASTLE

Adelaide Festival has just announced two excellent reasons for travelling to the Festival State in March next year. Renowned for staging visiting international productions of the most outstanding quality, Adelaide Festival Artistic Director is excited to tell me of his two lighthouse attractions to be presented at the 2027 festival. Audiences will be treated to a rare opportunity to see Italian opera director Romeo Castelluci’s breathtaking production of Bela Bartok’s operatic masterpiece, Bluebeard’s Castle and Barrie Kosky’s K, a reimagining of Franz Kafka’s The Trial.

Over coffee in a cafe below the Adelaide Festival Office, Lutton is eager to describe these two remarkable and innovative works. Bluebeard’s Castle is based on an old French fairy tale about Bluebeard’s new bride Judith and the curiosity that prompts her to want to discover what lies behind the many doors of the castle’s rooms. Although forbidden to open them, she disobeys and discovers in one a torture chamber, in another golden opulence and wealth, in another a beautiful ocean scene until she finally reaches the last room where Bluebeard has kept his dead wives. Fortunately her brother arrives in time to save her from her dreadful fate and Bluebeard is destroyed. 

 Bartok’s opera does not mention the dead wives and there is no rescue. The opera is rather a psychic journey through the bits that are hidden in our lives. Imagery reveals the rooms and Castelluci presents an elemental staging of a space filled with water. Each time Judith opens a door the room erupts with fire in a spectacular accompaniment to the awesome orchestration and the vocal power of the writing. “ The music is amazing.” Lutton tells me” And the sound impact from the orchestra is incredible. That’s our big opening opera.”

Former Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival and director of previous Adelaide Festival opera performances, Barrie Kosky returns to his earlier influences with his interpretation of Kafka’s The Trial. Often done in a very sombre and dark way, Kafka’s play in Kosky’s production is heavily imbued with his earlier Melbourne influences of Ginguol and the Yiddish world of vaudeville. K is text based theatre with songs performed by the extraordinary actors of the Berliner Ensemble. “It is exhilarating.” Lutton says.”Barrie really digs his way into the comedy.”

Kathrin Wehlisch is K

“There is a great line I love,”Lutton continues laughing,”when the actress playing Joseph K yells out ‘Is it all going to end badly, but I’m not guilty!’. It’s very funny. There’s lots of slapstick but it also goes into investigating the law, and Judaism and its complexities. What Kafka does and what Barrie does is of course, you never say what K is guilty of but what shines out is that he is guilty because he’s Jewish. It’s not expressed in words, but it is obvious to anyone from that cultural background. Barrie does it with so much mischief and playfulness, with a band playing and dancing rabbis.” Lutton is struck with awe by leading actress, Kathrin Wehlisch’s portrayal of K. She is an amazing comedic performer “who seems like plastic on stage but can break your heart with her vulnerability.”

Photo by Joerg  Brueggeman

No longer the Enfant Terrible, Kosky has become the mature imaginer of world theatre. He talks about filling himself with ideas all his life and now he is like a sponge wringing them out and his theatre works are inspired by decades of theatre imagining. Audiences will have a new and exciting opportunity to see the infusion of all that creativity and inspiration in the Adelaide Festival’s inclusion of Barrie Kosky and Franz Kafka’s K performed by one of the greatest ensembles in the world.

Kathrin Wehlisch in  Barrie Kosky's K

I ask Lutton if there is a theme emerging in the presentation of these very diverse works. “Well, actually, there is a theme of rethinking older works, whether it’s tales or novels and asking what is a different way to see them on stage. As you can see in Bluebeard’s Castle and K a lot of the shows are about lying. What is a lie and can there be contradictions?” Lutton points out that seeking more truth can be very destructive, and sometimes lying is very healing. “Can we confirm what truth is? I like that throughout the festival there are those discussions. We are looking at those themes, rather than any didactic politics. It’s never about discussing left wing or right wing. I’d much rather be caught up by the fantasy and then think about all these underlying issues afterwards. Adelaide Festival offers large scale productions for large scale ideas. That is what the festival is famous for. It keeps pushing against art becoming smaller and smaller.” Lutton bemoans the fact that we appear to be seeing economy at the forefront rather than creativity. In Germany every little town has its own ballet company or opera company, and often towns may only be an hour apart. It is an acknowledgement of the importance of opera and ballet in people’s lives that we in Australia can only view with envy.

As if one needed to I ask Lutton why festival goers should choose to go to Bluebeard’s Castle and K?  “They have never seen it staged in Australia before” Lutton says of Castelluci’s spectacular production. Bluebeard’s Castle premiered at the Salzburg Festival in 2022 and this will be an exclusive premiere at the Adelaide Festival. “It is about bold staging. It is what opera offers most – an emotional cathartic experience. It will also cause your hair to stand up on the back of your neck, because of the singing. Judith’s singing is so powerful. It is also far more chilling to see live than any recording. It is about story, live music and singing that we in a very domesticated world don’t have often enough.

And K? I ask. “You want to see Barrie’s work” Lutton says. “You want to see the actors from the Berliner Ensemble. You want to see Kafka. You want to see this very Jewish version of Kafka. And I think it’s fair to say that I couldn’t identify anyone in Australia who could make this version of K. It’s rare.”

There is also nowhere else in Australia that audiences will have the rare opportunity to see these ground-breaking works by two of the world’s most innovative directors of opera and theatre. Tickets are already on sale for Bluebeard’s Castle and K, and if Castelluci’s production of Mozart’s Requiem at the 2023 festival and Kosky’s productions of The Magic Flute, The Golden Cockerel and The Threepenny Opera at previous festivals are anything to go by,  Bluebeard’s Castle and K are both destined for sell-out seasons.

The full Adelaide Festival Programme will be launched on October 27 2026.

Adelaide Festival 2027: February 26 – March14 2027

Bluebeard’s Castle will be performed at the Festival Theatre from February 26 – March 2 2027

K will be performed at Her Majesty’s Theatre from March 4-7 2027

Bookings: 1300 393 404, www.adelaidefestival.com.au