Editorial Review:

Album Description:
A modern version of the old European folk-tale about the cruel, blue-bearded prince and his many disappearing wives, Bartok's opera Bluebeard's Castle is a metaphor for the impossiblility of complete love between a man and a woman. No scene is more vividly portrayed or more memorable than the moment when Judith opens the fifth door to behold a vista looking out ofver all Bluebeard's domains. One of the most spine tingling moments in twentierh-century opera, a violently dissonant wave of sound transforms, in an instant, to a massive C Major chord in the full orchestra.

Rating: - A careful, too relaxed Bluebeard -- where's the shock?
Marin Alsop was praised for her recent Naxos CD of The Miraculous Mandarin, but her noiton of Bartok is too smoothed out and rhythmically idle for me, two qualities that especially show up in this account of Bluebeard's Castle. Having jsut heard a reissue of a nearly fogotten CD of the opera from 1979 with Fischer-Dieskau and Julia Varady on DG, I came to this new one thinking that even if Alsop didn't have great singers, she could do mor with the orchestral score than Sawalisch on that disc.
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