Premiered in 1907, Dukas’s opera Ariane et Barbe-Bleue (after a Maeterlinck tale) caused much engergetic and heated discussion in the salons of Paris. The suffragette movement was in its infancy, and the oppression of women and the rampant inequality of the sexes – themes highlighted in the opera – were risky subjects for public discussion at the time. Ariane’s magnanimous decision to let Blue Beard live at the end of the work and her refusal to obey him, was perceived as a demand for more femininity in politics. Her fight for freedom was seen as a cry for more rights for women. The treatment of the story, and the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s (Dukas was of Jewish extraction) saw to it that the work remained outside the operatic repertoire. It has however never lacked champions. Fellow composers Szymanowski, Busoni, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern were admirers.

Dukas’s score is a wonderful blend of Wagner, Richard Strauss, and impressionism. The spirit of Berlioz is also evoked in places – one can understand Bruno Walter’s admiration for the work, and his view that it ranks alongside Pelléas and Melisande as one of the great French operas.