The first full-length study of Bartok's 1911 opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle, this book is an authoritative study of one of the twentieth century's enduring operatic works. It adopts a broad approach to the study of opera by introducing, in addition to the expected music-dramatic analysis, topics of a more interdisciplinary nature that are new to the field of Bartok studies, including a detailed literary study of the libretto and a gender-focusedanalysis of the opera's female character, Judith.