Rafael Kubelik conducts Bartók: Bluebeard’s Castle

The exiled Czech conductor Rafael Kubelík made Lucerne his second home and, for nearly five decades, was one of the leading figures of the festival. Alongside Irmgard Seefried and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau he performed Béla Bartók’s only opera, Bluebeard’s Castle, in 1962, revealing with an infallible sense for Bartók’s orchestral riches the emotional abysses of this musical psychological thriller.