DUKE BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE (LSO at St Luke’s)****

 

By Dave

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GSciEIl0IE&t=1s

Available until: Unknown

If you already know Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, you’re probably not going to find a better concert version. The usual problem with this opera is that it’s all about a creepy house and that is very difficult to stage in a concert hall. All you can do is listen to the music and try to imagine it. Most concert halls aren’t creepy at all – they’re new and posh and really comfortable. It really is all down to the singers, conductor and orchestra.

St Luke’s is a beautiful church and the Jerwood Hall, where this concert is held, is also beautiful but it lends itself to creepiness surprisingly well. It has big arched windows, bare bricks, concrete pillars and spiral staircases. The acoustics of a church tend to be naturally echoey, even in a hall, which is what happens here. Not enough to interfere with the opera, just enough to hear just the suggestion of an echo in every pause, as though the ghosts of Bluebeard’s other wives are echoing Judith’s words, which they might have all said themselves, and Bluebeard’s words, many of which he would have said to them.

The lighting helps too. It’s all blues, greens and purples to begin with – beautiful colours, but not colours you’d associate with brightness and happiness when you put them all together. The colours change as the characters open the different doors in Bluebeard’s castle. It all adds to the feeling of spookiness.

Then, of course, there are the unnatural circumstances. The singers who can’t go near each other. The orchestra, all spaced out. We feel, instinctively (as well as seeing it for ourselves), that something is different and wrong. That is exactly the sort of feeling this opera needs.

There is an audience at the concert but we don’t see them and I didn’t notice any sounds until the end when they all started clapping. It really does seem as though it’s just the conductor, audience and singers and that adds to the sense of eeriness.

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the LSO, making the orchestra sound gentle and beautiful a lot of the time but he also knows how to fill the hall with menace. It’s not a beautiful story but it’s easy to forget how beautiful the music is till you hear it.

Gerald Finley is at his very best here. He is imposing, awe-inspiring and deeply untrustworthy. But there’s also something compelling and spellbinding in his performance. When I’ve seen this before, I’ve always thought Judith was a bit of an idiot. It’s very obvious that going anywhere with this man is a bad idea. But with Gerald’s performance, I could understand it. I can see why she finds him irresistible. There’s also a surprising suggestion of vulnerability in his performance. He really doesn’t want Judith to open those doors.

Karen Cargill sings Judith. She sings powerfully and with deep feeling, at once a strong, confident woman who’s capable of making demands of Bluebeard himself and a frightened one who knows she’s in probably the worst situation she could be in. Her acting is also very good - you can see her psychological battle as she’s torn between staying with the man she’s drawn to and getting out of there like any sensible person would. She’s not blinded by love. She’s not stupid. But she can’t break away. She doesn’t even want to. She needs to know everything about this man.

It’s a great performance, but there is one problem for me. Although the Prologue of the Bard – powerfully and absorbingly spoken by Gerald Finley – is in English, the rest of the opera is in Hungarian and there are no subtitles, other than words which appear on the screen to tell you which door is being opened and what is inside. If you speak Hungarian, you’ll be fine. If you know the opera well, you’ll be fine. If you know the opera a little bit, as I do, you can get by. If you can see the voices as musical instruments and treat it as an orchestral work where you don’t need to know what every note means, you’ll be fine then too.

But although it’s brilliant for people who know the opera, some people who aren’t familiar with it are unlikely to appreciate it in the same way. They’ll hear some wonderful music which many will appreciate, but it’s unlikely they’d be able to follow the story, though they’d probably see the tension between the characters.

It’s an incredibly intense performance and it’s hard to believe it’s only just over an hour long - it packs in the drama and potency of a much longer work.