Bluebeard - Bluebeard's Wives

Bluebeard's Wives

Maurice Maeterlinck wrote extensively on Bluebeard and in his plays names at least five former wives: Sélysette from "Aglavaine et Sélysette" (1896), Alladine from "Alladine et Palomides" (1894) and both Ygraine and Bellangère from "La mort de Tintagiles" (1894), Mélisande from "Pelléas et Mélisande" and Ariane from "Ariane et Barbe-bleue" (1907).

Bela Bartók's opera "A Kékszakállú hérceg vára" (1911) names Judith, which places her as wife number four, whereas Ariane would be wife number six, but fails to take Judith into account. Bartók's version does not name any of the wives that appear in it.

Anatole France's short story "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard" names Jeanne as the last wife before Bluebeard's death.

Alfred Savoir wrote in the 1920's a play "La huitième femme de Barbe-Bleue" (Bluebeard's eighth wife) from which Sam Wood and Ernst Lubitsch produced two films, other than starting from the point of being a plus one wife of Bluebeard and that it considers Anatole France's count of his wives, this play or the films share nothing with a description or numbering of the duke's wives.

In Eduard Dmytryk's film Bluebeard (1972), Baron von Sepper (Richard Burton) is an Austrian aristocrat known as Bluebeard for his blue-toned beard, and his appetite for beautiful wives. This film names an American beauty named Anne, who discovers a vault in his castle filled with the frozen bodies of his previous wives.