At Avery Fisher Hall in March, Christoph von Dohnányi led the New York Philharmonic and two sensitive singers, resonant baritone Matthias Goerne and bright-voiced mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, in an aptly dark and dramatic account of Béla Bartók’s A kékszakállú herceg vára ( Bluebeard’s Castle ), punctuated by brilliant flashes of musical color. The one-act opera, written in 1911 and given its premiere in Budapest in 1918, was sung in the original Hungarian, with words by Béla Balázs.

The second of three performances, on March 10, is considered here.

Otter’s Judit (Judith), Bluebeard’s newest wife, was awed by what she found in her strange new spouse’s castle—the gloom, the very stones tear-stained—but conveyed genuine devotion to him and determination to bring warmth into her new home. She grew agitated as she discovered its doors locked against her, quietly expressed sympathy as she heard mysterious moans and sighs, and showed increasing boldness as she requested access to the secret rooms. The sight of blood on Bluebeard’s instruments of torture and warfare and on his wondrous treasures and blossoms stirred the mezzo to an anxious pitch.

Goerne’s Bluebeard took on an ominous tone when he warned his love, for both their sakes, against pursuing her inquisitiveness about the castle’s forbidding secrets. He sang sadly, beautifully, to harp accompaniment, about the sorrows released by her curiosity. Soon, though, he urged her on in her quest to open the castle’s doors and become privy to his mysteries.

These forces made the most of the spectacular opening of the fifth door, with Otter unleashing a solid high C; Goerne rhapsodizing over the vast expanse of his lands, now to be shared with his bride; and Dohnányi’s huge orchestra, now with the addition of the organ, going full tilt, all luxuriating in the rich hues of this moment in the score. Goerne soon sounded defeated, though, as he acquiesced in disclosing to Judit the lake of tears behind the sixth door.

Otter and Goerne shared a sad sort of duet of love, already doomed by the baggage both figures brought to this union, before she demanded access to the seventh room—another powerful moment for the orchestra—which would reveal the fate of Bluebeard’s former wives. The motif of tears returned just before Otter’s Judit proved stunned to find her predecessors still living, if only in Bluebeard’s memories.

Goerne fondly reminisced about the women his Bluebeard had loved before, but who, in his view, had betrayed him, with Otter’s Judit, finding herself deficient in beauty beside them, already joining them as part of his past, and sorrow enveloping both protagonists, crushing and inexorable as the darkness of night.

Franz Schubert’s Symphony in B minor (“Unfinished)” preceded Bartók’s opera.

Avery Fisher Hall, 10 Lincoln Center Plaza