The first night of English National Opera’s Bluebeard’s Castle (billed as a “concert semi-staging”, though there is considerably more to it than that) turned out to be unique, startling and completely unforgettable, thanks in no small measure to the unusual circumstances that surrounded it. Allison Cook, cast as Judith, withdrew from the performance late in the day because of illness. With only two hours’ rehearsal, Jennifer Johnston sang, not from the side of the stage, as one might expect, but as a costumed, albeit largely immobile presence within Joe Hill-Gibbins’s production. The role was acted, meanwhile, wonderfully well, by Crispin Lord, one of ENO’s staff directors, handsome yet androgynous in a white singlet and silk skirt, so that Bluebeard’s final partner, in a remarkable twist, effectively becomes his husband rather than his wife.
Bypassing at a stroke the perceived gender polarities that inform Bartók’s examination of marital disintegration, the end result is at once strikingly erotic and profoundly unsettling, particularly within the context of Hill-Gibbins’s chillingly beautiful staging.
