| “Three Magnificent Voices” |
Welsh National Opera |
| Bluebeard's Castle & Oedipus Rex , Wales Millennium Centre , October 5, 2026 |
Wales' most seasoned opera writer was at the new double bill from the national company on behalf of Arts Scene in Wales.“Three magnificent voices, one concept, and a nagging sense throughout that Cardiff had bought more than just half a double bill had made. But, hey, does it matter to the ticket buyer? “Let’s deal with the small print first. Bluebeard’s Castle is not really a WNO production at all; it is Joe Hill-Gibbins’ staging for English National Opera, shipped down conductor and all. “It has a new spooky start making good use of the female chorus setting the tone, singing two mournful pieces by a 12th-century abbess Hildegard of Bingen. “Oedipus Rex is genuinely new and billed as the company’s own creation. Watch both shows and you could forgiven for thinking we had just taken an interval stroll round the London Coliseum, the one time home of ENO. “Similar sparse sets, bare dining tables, now some joined together than just a long wedding one, and painted red instead of white. More a work’s canteen for the chorus in Oedipus Rex than the wedding banquet in Bluebeard’s Castle. “The wings look as if they have been left open to extenuate that this is Greek drama. Singers clambering on and off the furniture for reasons nobody quite explains. Lots of chairs getting shifted around. A lot of running around. A lot of red wine sloshing about. A bit of gore. One does wonder why WNO didn’t simply ask ENO to put together the second half too. “The Bluebeard staging piles on the props: bloodied flowers, golden confetti for jewels, cutlery doing service as weapons, and, most bafflingly, some fifteen former wives in wedding dresses, backed by a women’s chorus who seem to be there purely to fill the stage (and produce a wonderful sound). “Bartók and Balázs specified three wives, met at dawn, noon and evening, each recalled with real tenderness in that extraordinary seventh door. Fifteen turns a carefully counted heartbreak into a crowd scene, and rather misses the point. “It’s worth remembering, too, that the Prologue itself tells us none of this is meant to be literal. Where does the stage begin and end, it asks us, outside us or within? Bartok’s librettist Balázs is quite clear the whole thing unfolds inside our own heads. Given that, a plain concert performance, with singing this good, would have done the job just as well, without dressing psychology up as some deranged wedding feast. “L J Parkinson, who speaks that Prologue, never actually leaves. He hangs about all evening as Bluebeard’s butler, fetching props, and then reappears after the interval to narrate Oedipus Rex. Add a men’s chorus doing much the same milling about as the women’s chorus before it, and the second half starts to feel less like ancient tragedy and more like a slightly unhinged Greek hog (ox/sphinx) roast. “None of which should obscure the real point of going. Christine Rice and Nathan Berg were sensational as Judith and Bluebeard, warm, sonorous, utterly convincing, Rice vocally always on the right side of melodrama while Berg shows a sensitive side to the Duke that stops him being some sort of ogre. “Then we have the red-suited Peter Hoare making a compelling Oedipus, full of self-doubt and guilt, and Rice and Berg having returned after the interval as Jocasta and Tiresias, carrying the same authority straight through. Stephen Richardson gives support as Creon and Messenger. Alun Rhys-Jenkins sang a fine Shepherd and I assume because he had to keep rearranging the chairs in the staff canteen these were a replacement for sheep. “Was it worth this staging as the opera-oratoria is sometimes given in a concert hall as an oratorio? I am not sure. “Oddly the use of a very bright white light that not so subtlety turned into a red light dominating the stage also meant it was impossible to read those surtitles a chunk of the time. “Which leaves the awkward question. Yes, the playing was powerful and the singing from the named singers strong, with some demonstration of the great value of the WNO chorus, but is this really the best a publicly funded national company can manage? “A company meant to make its own work, reduced to importing someone else’s production and dressing up a companion piece in the same clothes? If the look and feel are this close, WNO might as well have let ENO finish the job properly and bought in the whole thing. This is particularly pertinent when the Boheme being performed this season is another buy in. Are things really that bad we can only stage the other half of a double bill that frankly seems the continuation of the first, with some tweaking?” Abridged, with thanks and acknowledgement, from the full review which can be read at: https://asiw.co.uk/reviews/buebeards-castle-and-oedious-rex-welsh-national-opera Photo credit: Dafydd Owen |
Reviewed by: Adam Somerset |
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