Opera Scotland

Bluebeard's Castle 2023Theatre of Sound

Read more about the opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle

Theatre of Sounds radical re-interpretation of Bartók's operatic masterpiece was awarded the Opera and Music Theatre Award at the 2023 Royal Philharmonic Society Awards. This Edinburgh International Festival chamber presentation should work perfectly in the excellent Church Hill Theatre, which has not been used often enough for music theatre.

The opera is presented in a newly-commissioned English  libretto by Daisy Evans, who also directs.  The conductor Stephen Higgins has prepared his own arrangement of the orchestration.

In a departure from the original folktale, director Daisy Evans reimagines the relationship between Bluebeard and Judith as a love story without the aristocratic title.  In this retelling, husband and wife face the reality of living with dementia while celebrating their long love and shared memories.

Instead of ominous doors, a locked trunk sits in the living room.  Judith begs for it to be opened, over and over again, and as it is, memories spill out - a wedding, a child, a family.  This castle is not a dank, airless dungeon, but rather a happy home where Judith and Bluebeard have shared their most precious memories.

But now Judith is living with dementia.  She slips away from Bluebeard, leaving him alone with the shreds of their life.