Last Updated on November 2, 2025
Bluebeard and his Zombie Brides
Psychic dungeons, a lake of tears, weeping walls, and to cap it all an unexpected homo-erotic subtext, what’s not to love the ENO’s semi-staged performance of Béla Bartók’s one-act symbolist psychodrama Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. With a poetic libretto by Jewish-Hungarian writer Béla Balázs, the opera was composed in 1911 but not performed until 1918 in Budapest. Balázs’ take on the Bluebeard mythos derived from a story written by Charles Perrault, the French author who codified the fairy tale genre, transforming folk tales into classics such as “The Sleeping Beauty”, “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Cinderella”. In a break from their usual practice, ENO is performing this production in its original language, Hungarian, with English surtitles.
The show opens with a prologue. The narrator is actor Leo Bill who creeps through the stage curtains and then strikes a deliberately hammy pose. He invites us the audience to consider that there may be dramatic form and value in our inner psychological worlds rather than just the exterior – “Where is the stage, is it outside or within?” The opera’s story is about Bluebeard who is returning to his castle with his new wife Judith who has run away from both family and fiancé to be with the older man. On arrival at Bluebeard’s castle Judith finds a dank, dark and forbidding bloodstained space with seven locked interior doors that her husband forbids her to enter. Judith insists that Bluebeard give her access (“Open the door, open the door”); there’s a torture chamber, an armoury, a treasury, a lake of tears, a portal that opens up onto his kingdom, and a garden, and then the seventh chamber which houses Bluebeard’s previous wives – normally three but fifteen veiled quasi-zombie spouses in this production all dressed in their catalogue wedding finery – who will in turn be joined by Judith…
The drama is centred around the shifting power dynamics between the two leads with Bartók’s score reflecting the emotional state of the protagonists as well as the psychic worlds opened by the seven unlockings – for instance, the door that opens up onto great vistas across Bluebeard’s kingdom is presaged by regal sounding parallel major chords and the ever-present blood motif is represented by the dissonant stranglehold of a minor 2nd interval. The composer’s musical language shifts from the stridently tonal to the deliciously chromatic with orchestration delivered by the percussion-heavy extended orchestra that encompasses brass fusillades, woodwind flourishes and the luscious sonorities of the opening strings. Melodies are infused with the spiky asymmetry of Hungarian folk music.
Designer Rosanna Vize has dressed the otherwise bare stage with a long white rectangular table surrounded by simple black chairs. It acts as an effective platform for a symbolic articulation of the worlds behind the seven doors. The flowing blood of the dungeon is represented by a constantly overfilled wine glass with the wine (hopefully Bull’s Blood) cascading onto the table. The riches of the treasury are brought to life by the narrator throwing fistfuls of fluttering golden gloss paper squares across the stage and the garden is a huge bouquet.
The Duke is played by Canadian bass John Relyea in a dinner jacket with the bowtie hanging rakishly around his neck. Relyea brings a tortured sense of gravitas to the role alongside vocal power and a rich timbre. However, there was a major complication with this production. Mezzo-soprano Allison Cook who was booked to play her signature role of Judith was indisposed and replaced at the last minute by Jennifer Johnstone who flew in on the day to sing the part. Johnstone has a gloriously dusky voice the grain of which fully inhabits the essence of feminine love that Judith represents. She is also no stranger to operas that explore the darker side of the human psyche from an early 20th century perspective such as Korngold’s “Die Tote Stadt”. But in an intriguing twist, the corpus of Judith was walked by a man, assistant director Crispin Lord dressed in the same costume as Johnstone who was positioned slightly to the side of the stage, in a white vest, a clingy long white satin skirt and trainers. The Judith/Bluebeard relationship is physically passionate with an undercurrent of violence. Both Relyea and Lord committed fully to the non-hetero-normative casting with aplomb and although there is no obvious gay subtext in the opera or even in Bartók’s life, the circumstance-driven gender-swapping conceit adds an unexpected sexual frisson to the production.
The wonderful ENO band was expertly conducted by Lidiya Yankovskaya. There were some occasional vocal balance issues no doubt due to underrehearsal with Johnstone’s vocal being overwhelmed by the orchestra, but aside of that tempi were very secure and the brilliance of Bartók’s orchestration and composition cut through the on-stage angst and gloom like a laser . The recent ideological attack on the arts and in particular ENO by the government which has led to a shameful reduction in employment for the orchestra is a national cultural disaster which must be redressed by an incoming Labour administration.
Critics are divided as to how to read the symbolism in Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. Are the castle and Judith’s character all part of the Duke’s interior psychic drama? Is Bartók Bluebeard? The composer was in a series of relationships and marriages to a series of talented but very young women so it’s easy to draw a parallel. This production doesn’t take a position and places its focus on the uneasy relationship between the two leads. If you enjoy the darker side of the mittel-european musical psyche then you will love the ENO’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and should grab a seat and support this progressive institution.
21 Mar–23 Mar 2024
English National Opera, London Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, London WC2N 4ES
21 and 23 March 2024
English National Opera
London Coliseum
St Martin’s Lane
London WC2N 4ES
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