The first full-length study of Bartók'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 Bartók studies, including a detailed literary study of the libretto and a gender-focused analysis of the opera's female character, Judith.