Seattle Opera’s double bill of Bela Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung, which opened on Saturday, offers a chance to experience two masterful works written in the period 1909-11, masterfully performed.

Think back to 1909: Model-T Fords, D.W. Griffith, William Howard Taft. The distant past, no? Yet music is the only art form that has such a time lag between yesterday’s modernity and today’s acceptance. Both of these operas spring directly from the tormented world of Freud’s early years and can best be described as expressionist, if we define "expressionism" as romanticism in a state of decadence and putrefaction.

The Bartók work is familiar here and was performed by the Seattle Symphony a few years ago. The Schoenberg is new to Seattle, and I could hardly believe I was hearing it in the Opera House. I remember interviewing SSO conductor Gerard Schwarz in 1988, hearing him say: "I love Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces, Opus 16, but would never dare play them in Seattle." Well, now we are lucky to hear the far more advanced Opus 17, Erwartung!

The evening began with the Bartók. This early work was given short shrift by many of the composer’s admirers and failed to win the prize for which it was written, but as time goes by it gets better and better.

The libretto by Béla Balász may be dated, schematic, and repetitive, but it has some striking language, powerful images, and just the right sort of vagueness, playing a more humane Bluebeard against the myth of the ogre in the Perrault tale. Bartók’s response is amazingly assured and coherent, with stringent and supple motivic writing to enliven the rigid structure of the text. The orchestration is as good as any of Bartók’s later efforts, and the heavily folk-tinged vocal parts follow the speech rhythms as clearly as in Janacek. (Bartók and Janacek did meet but did not know each other’s music until the mid-1920’a.)

In Bluebeard, as well as Erwartung, most of the musical material is to be found in the orchestra, in the Wagnerian manner. Therefore, any discussion of the performances must begin with the work of Evan Rogister, making his local debut, and the orchestra itself. In the Bartók the playing and conducting were close to perfect, harsh when necessary, mellifluous when called for. The sound was fully shaped: the grandiose outburst that follows the opening of the fifth door was full and rich, blended and smooth. The solo wind players were superb. From my vantage point, beneath the overhang at the rear of the orchestra, it was unclear if the extra, offstage brass were used.

Malgorzata Walewska, the Polish soprano in her Seattle debut, was a very attractive Judith with an appropriately Eastern-European voice with a wide range of colors. The high notes were hard, with the fast vibrato that is characteristic of voices from that region. John Relyea was a sympathetic Bluebeard, with lots of presence. His sound is more Italianate than Walewska, and Bartók might have been better served by a blacker, firmer projection.

Arthur Woodley appeared in the spoken prologue. The text of this prologue is by Balázs, and a much longer version than the libretto's was published separately under the title of “Prologue of the Bard.” It does offer some psychological preparation for the events to come, and while the prologue is often cut entirely, the full text is far preferable, especially when the evening is such a short one.

Since the Schoenberg is a rarity everywhere and there is little information about it in the program, allow me some remarks on its background. Schoenberg’s early works are strictly in a late-Romantic idiom. Pieces like Verklärte Nacht and the Gurrelieder demonstrate his total and personal mastery of the Wagner-Mahler language. The year of Erwartung, 1909, was a critical year in the life and music of the composer. In 1908, his wife Mathilde (the daughter of the composer Alexander Zemlinsky) left him and their children for the well-known expressionist poet Richard Gerstl. She returned in 1909, causing Gerstl to commit suicide. At this point Schoenberg met a doctor, Marie Pappenheim, an early disciple of Freud and commissioned a libretto from her.

It can be seen that his overheated inner life made this libretto about a troubled woman appealing, and perhaps a chance for revenge. He took only 17 days to set it, but this was not unusual for Schoenberg. Those who think of him as a malevolent constructor of intellectual sand castles are always surprised to find that he wrote with lightening speed in all styles, claiming that the complex interrelationships in his music came directly from his unconscious. (He also adored tennis, frequently playing with Gershwin in LA, and was an ardent fan of Hopalong Cassidy.)

In the years 1908-9, Schoenberg began his middle, or “atonal” period, by far his most avant-garde writing. Here, in his own words, he "emancipated the dissonance.” Other works from this period include the Five Pieces for Orchestra, Pierrot Lunaire, and his second opera, Die Glückliche Hand.

His final style, twelve-tone music, was seen by him as a sort of neo-classicism (signaled by his first full work in that style, a baroque suite for piano), and indeed he at times returned to tonality as well in his final years. Therefore, despite what you might have read in the local press, Erwartung is by no means an “early work” but one of Schoenberg’s most advanced accomplishments. This calls to mind one of the composer’s best quips: “My music is not modern, only badly played.” So, praise again to conductor and orchestra!

Of course, Erwartung is not really atonal, although there are no triads. Many of the chords have a prominent fifth above the bass and sound like impressionism or the extended chords familiar to jazz musicians; and the melodies, short as they are, clearly center around individual pitches. The overall sense is of a highly concentrated coherence and a bewitchingly rich orchestral style. It is very difficult to bring out all of these effects, especially in a place so lacking in resonance as the Opera House. On Friday, the string parts in particular did not have the necessary weight to clarify the chordal structures. More performances will probably bring about the needed adjustments. Susan Marie Pierson has sung the role of the Woman often, and all the notes were perfectly centered. Her lyrical approach undoubtedly added to the sensuous effect of the performance, even if it somewhat muted the hysteria.

The production, originally by Robert Lepage and recreated by François Racine, has been a success worldwide since its inception at the Canadian Opera in 1993. With sets by Michael Levine and the media effects of Laurie-Shawn Borzovoy, it is truly a 21st-century event, which economically exploits new techniques to achieve expressionist-surrealist effects. There is always something to watch. Whether you find that some of the visual virtuosity distracts from the music is purely personal.

In Bluebeard, the thing that troubled me most was the use of men to play the silent roles of Bluebeard’s three earlier brides. Granted that they have been with the production since the start and their special acrobatic talents are fully needed in Erwartung, couldn’t we have three female supers who would have looked much better in those dresses?