other, pursues with wrath and vengeance the law-breaker, the indiscriminate
love-winner, the wife-collector and wife-slayer; and, although women still
have a strange and persistent fancy for marriage, they might sometimes
avoid it if they realized that a violent death were the price.

We must first study the musical construction of the overture with which the
music-drama opens, as it is well known that Wagner in his Preludes prepares
the spectator's mind for the impressions that are to follow. Several of the
leading motives appear in this _Vorspiel_ and must be appreciated to be
understood. First we have the "_Blaubart_motiv_" (Bluebeard Motive). This
is a theme whose giant march gives us in rhythmic thunders the terrible
power of the hero.

["_Blaubart_motiv_"]

The "_Blaubart_motiv_" should be constantly kept in mind, as it is a clue
to much of the later action, being introduced whenever Bluebeard budges an
inch from his doorstep. We do not hear in it the majestic grandeur of the
Wotan or Walsungen motifs, and why? Simply because it was not intended to
illustrate godlike power, but _brute_force_.

Now if this were all, we had no more to say; but listen!

[Immer-wieder-heirathen Motiv]

What does this portend--this entrance of another theme, written for the
treble clef, played with the right hand, but mysteriously interwoven with
the bass? What but that Bluebeard is not to be the sole personage in this
music-drama; and we judge the stranger to be a female on account of the
overwhelming circumstantial evidence just given.