I first heard Bluebeard's Castle during a long late-night journey home. I was on my own in the train carriage, which added to the weird sense of spooky displacement, and was listening to this very recording, a CD from BBC Music magazine (which rivals the top recommended commercial recordings). It's the first time I felt utterly creeped out and disturbed by opera. What a fantastic and powerful performance; and it's not just muscular power (although that delivers in abundance when necessary, eg the opening of the fifth door), but it's the psychological force that leaves you disturbed and moved. It really brings out Bartok's tangible sense of dark lusts and desires driving the unfortunate protagonists beyond their control. This is also the first time I have preferred an English translation in opera. I have not seen a live performance of this; in fact, I think a staging may detract from the visceral force of this work. Like Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood, I could imagine that this was written 'for radio' or even better, in a concert hall/theatre where the audience is shrouded in complete darkness. Bluebeard's castle is an intense psychological drama based on the French legend. In this re-working, Bluebeard arrives in his dark, oppressive castle with his new bride, Judith. Her curiosity and relentlessness delves deeper into Bluebeard's protective psyche, revealing ever darker secrets, unlocking doors in the castle (actual doors or suppressed parts of Bluebeard himself? The work goes out of its way not to answer this riddle) until she finally discovers the final secret and her fate. The idea of male secrecy challenged by female curiosity must have greatly appealed to the composer, Bela Bartok: he was, after all, a profoundly private individual whose life was underscored by powerful infatuations and deep-rooted relationships. Bartok wasn't the first composer to set the story of Bluebeard to music: Gretry, Offenbach and Dukas preceded him. But the Bartok/Balazs collaboration is unique -- in its narrative simplicity, the psychological force that lies behind the characters and in its very personal symbolism. The drama is internalized, its outward manifestations merely the guides to a whole range of repressed conflicts. The descriptive power of the music equals, indeed surpasses, most other works of its kind; seven doors and seven meaningful spectacles behind them, all reflected in orchestration that is so startlingly graphic that a physical stage set hardly seems necessary.