Bluebeard's Castle / Erwartung

In Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, the new bride Judith demands that her husband open seven locked doors in his dark castle, each revealing a progressively more disturbing secret, from a torture chamber to a lake of tears, until the final door reveals the fate of all his previous wives. In Schoenberg's Erwartung, a woman searches a moonlit forest for her lover, her mounting terror and fractured memories building to the discovery of his body. Two masterpieces of psychological horror, frequently paired in performance.