In January 2014, Mr Gray said: “Eva is a woman who wants to learn, wants to know. She is not alone: ​​according to Greek mythology, Semele longs to see Zeus in all his divine glory, which she is seen only in Hera. And Elsa, according to German mythology, wants to ask all forbidden questions about the name and origin of Lohengrin.

“But why are all these women punished because their only desire is the acquisition of knowledge?” Mr. Gray wonders while listening to Bela Bartók’s one-act opera The Tower of the Bluebird: as he enters the dark Gothic castle, Bluebird’s new wife, Judith, wonders why the walls are damp. Castle crying? But these are not tears, this is blood flowing. Yet Judith believes that her love will bring light and joy. Delving deeper into her husband’s dark world, she discovers seven locked doors. “They hide my secrets,” Cyanopogon says. Judith demands that they be opened one by one until the castle is flooded with light.

But why are all these women punished because their only desire is to acquire knowledge?

What does he discover when he opens them? Instruments of torture, weapons, wealth, gardens and meadows – everything is soaked in blood. Cyanopogon demands that the last door not be opened, and then Judith asks him to find out what the previous wives were like, whether they were more beautiful than her, etc. She seems to already know what the seventh door hides: her husband stabbed the women. And if the last door is opened, Judith will also take her place there, along with other dead women. As the orchestra repeats the obsessive opening theme, everything goes dark and Cyanopogon is left all alone. His own hell seems like a world without women. No curiosity” (“The Woman Who Knew Too Much”, 26.1.14).

Nine years later, with a new production of Lyrical (see page 15 of today’s insert), Mr. Gray returns to the crime scene. If Kafka were music, he would be Bartok. But he was not a pessimist. In his 1907 letter, he expressed what the women in the dark tower of Cyanopogon symbolized: “We must have a great desire for life and a great interest in the existing universe.” He does not forget the first time he saw the sea, “whose whisper in solitude will always attract him”, as Pierre Citron writes (Bartok, trans. Thomas Sliomis, Patakis, 2008). The latter, commenting on Pyrgos, says: “The opera may be static, but full of meanings.” In due course, The Tower will be rejected by critics. Bartók would never write an opera again. But time has taken its revenge.