Two performances of Bluebeard’s Castle on the same day have left me somewhat jittery. Bartók’s only opera, examining a marriage pulled apart by the exposure of secrets, memories and past emotional pain, admits of multiple approaches, and this contrasting pair of interpretations could not be further apart in stance and intention. At Stone Nest on London’s Shaftesbury Avenue – once a chapel, then, in the 1980s and 90s, the Limelight club – the newly formed Theatre of Sound are staging a chamber version by director Daisy Evans and conductor-arranger Stephen Higgins that reimagines the opera as study of a happily married couple facing the devastating reality of the wife’s dementia. At the Royal Festival Hall, meanwhile, Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic gave a terrifying yet astonishingly beautiful account of Bartók’s original score – a more traditional treatment, inevitably, but no less disquieting by any means.
Purists might object to the Theatre of Sound version as straying too far from Bartók’s intentions, though it’s an unforgettable production in its own right. The opera’s symbolist paraphernalia is replaced by domestic naturalism both in terms of design and direction. In place of Bartók’s seven locked doors, a single trunk contains the relics of the couple’s past that Gerald Finley’s Bluebeard remembers with joy and anguish, as Susan Bullock’s Judith emotionally slips away from him. His previous three wives have become reflections of Judith’s former self, as lover, bride and mother, but the final image of solitude is hers, not his, a retreat into silence as she gazes at her reflection in a mirror. There are multiple casts during the run, but Finley and Bullock are utterly remarkable here, singing and acting with astonishing emotional nakedness and detailed veracity. Neither has done anything finer. This really is a devastating piece of theatre.
Higgins, meanwhile, conducts players from the London Sinfonietta in his own small-scale arrangement, skilfully done and carefully reflecting the deep sadness and eventual despair that characterises the production. You miss, though, the glamour, danger and incipient violence of Bartók’s full orchestration, where Gardner, as one might expect, is in his element. Preceded by Haydn’s Symphony No 90 in C Major – the same key as the climactic opening of Bartók’s fifth door – he dug deep into the score’s tensions and colours in a sensationally paced and played account. Ildikó Komlósi was his formidable Judith, hell-bent on breaking down the emotional remoteness of John Relyea’s Bluebeard, and catastrophically unaware that in so doing she will destroy them both. Powerhouse stuff, and similarly unforgettable.
Theatre of Sound’s Bluebeard’s Castle is at Stone Nest, London, until 14 November.
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