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MINNEAPOLIS (April 8, 2026) — Music Director Thomas Søndergård launches the Orchestra’s Sound Unbound project—highly visual treatments of music in the concert hall—with performances of Béla Bartók’s one-act psychological thriller Bluebeard’s Castle, on Friday, May 8, 8 p.m., and Saturday, May 9, 7 p.m., at Orchestra Hall. Presenting the chilling tale of a secretive duke and his disappearing wives, the opera is headlined by mezzo Michelle DeYoung and bass-baritone Nathan Berg and will incorporate immersive lighting design and digital projections by Adam Larsen. Twin Cities-based singer and actor Christina Baldwin will deliver the opera’s spoken Prologue. Søndergård opens the performances with two seminal operatic works by Richard Wagner: Prelude to Lohengrin and the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde.
When Béla Bartók submitted his new Bluebeard’s Castle in 1911 for an opera competition sponsored by the Hungarian Commission of Fine Arts, the judges initially pronounced the work “unperformable.” His musically dissonant, highly symbolist work—created with librettist Béla Balázs—was ahead of its time. Set in a castle with seven doors, the opera unwinds the menacing story of an enigmatic husband (Duke Bluebeard) and his new wife (Judith) who gradually opens each of the doors over the course of the one-hour opera to reveal horrific secrets. The opera was finally premiered in 1918 by the Royal Hungarian Opera in Budapest; far from being “unperformable,” the work has become a staple of the repertoire and is now considered a masterpiece of Modernist Expressionism. It was the only opera that Bartók ever wrote.
“I’ve always thought of Bluebeard’s Castle as a journey through hidden spaces within us—moments and memories that surface gradually as Judith opens each door,” says Creative Director Adam Larsen, who is charged with creating an immersive visual experience for Orchestra Hall audiences through digital projections and lighting that heightens the work’s stifling tensions. Principal at Hum-Bar—which specializes in projection, documentary, installation and film work—Larsen has collaborated with companies from Santa Fe Opera to Los Angeles Opera and worked with orchestras including the Houston Symphony, New York Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony.
Born in Michigan and raised in Colorado, Michelle DeYoung was in high school when her choir director suggested she consider a singing career. “I said, ‘Oh wow, I’m from Colorado, is that even possible?’” By age 23, she had won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions (now known as the Laffont Competition) and moved to New York to train in the Met’s Young Artist Program. She subsequently went on to perform with the world’s top opera companies, win multiple Grammy Awards and found Ensemble Charité, an organization that supports various charities and fosters the talents of emerging musicians. The role of Judith in Bluebeard’s Castle—challenging for its wide vocal range, taxing psychological dimensions and the complexity of singing in Hungarian—is one of DeYoung’s specialties; she has performed the role in dozens of productions across the country and recorded the work in 2014 with the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. DeYoung last appeared with the Minnesota Orchestra in performances of Mahler’s Third Symphony in 2005.
Grammy Award-winning bass-baritone Nathan Berg is also well versed in Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, having played the title role in performances from the Polish National Opera to the Boston and Montreal symphonies. Born in Saskatchewan and growing up in Alberta, Canada, Berg was first exposed to live opera when he saw Wagner’s Die Walkure at the Metropolitan Opera on a trip to New York in 1988. He went on to study in France and then at London’s Guildhall School of Music, and Richard Wagner’s music played a major role in his career; he has recently performed Wotan in Wagner’s Das Rheingold and Die Walkure in a new Ring cycle at Theater Basel. This season, he also sings Sparafucile in Rigoletto with Vancouver Opera and Scarpia in concert performances of Tosca with the National Arts Center in Ottawa. He last sang with the Minnesota Orchestra in 2007 Messiah performances.
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