Abstract Bart6k wrote his only opera in 1911. It is a setting of a previously written play, and as such illustrates an early twentieth-century penchant for what the German musicologist Carl Dahlhaus has called “literature opera”: Pe/leas et Melisande, Salome, Wozzeck are other notable examples. The poet in the present instance was Bela Balasz. Three years younger than Bart6k, Balasz belonged to the same coterie of young intellectuals and artists then rising to prominence in Budapest, all keenly aware of contemporary artistic developments in western Europe, yet all seeking to attain a higher level of artistic expression through a fusion of modernism with quintessential elements of their man-rise to their feet, dreamlike, from the deep recesses of slumbering memory. And wreathed with diadems and halos, they are more beautiful than all women presently living. Oh, how plain, how miserable Judith feels when Blue-beard sings in dreaming ecstasy of his past loves. But she doesn’t shudder in horror until he begins to beautify her, to adorn her with jewels. “Ah, Bluebeard, you are not dreaming, I am your poor, living wife.” But the man covers her with glittering ornaments, and Judith gradually grows numb with death. The man’s dream kills her, the very dream she herself has conjured up in him. And the dreaming man remains alone once more, his castle again locked and dark.