"Upon urgent affairs called Lord Bluebeard away--
"To inspection, sweet love, all my castle I leave,
"But remember with this key be on the _qui_vive_!
"It is not a natural key--think of that!
"My sword's in the key of one sharp, and that's flat!
"(Then he half drew his blade, and it was sharp and flat.)"

From this point the music-drama hastens tragically to a close. We have
Bluebeard's sudden (and feigned) journey, introduced by a pompous march of
great originality:

MARCH (Pomposo. Decrescendo.....sempre p pp ppp)

Then we have the fatal curiosity of Fatima and her sister Anne. We must
extenuate here, nor aught set down in malice, remembering that Wagner knew
only the women of his own day, before the sex was uplifted and purified by
the vote, and he naturally depicted them with the man-engendered vices that
were then a part of their unhappy heritage. This "_Neugierde_Motiv_"
(Curiosity Motive) is made up of agitated, sharply accentuated sixteenth
notes played with incredible vivacity and culminating in a terrifying
orchestral crash where entrance is made into the hidden chamber, with its
famous tableau so eloquent of the polygamous instinct of man; an instinct
only kept in subjection by the most stringent laws and the most militant
domestic discipline.

ANTI-FEMINIST ARIA

"But Fatima said, 'To the keyhole let's creep,
"There can be no harm just in one little peep!
"We are women--besides, there are none to behold us!