Andy Morton & Priscilla Jackman
Director & Associate Director
Composed by Bela Bartok
Opera Australia, Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Interpretation of Bartok is Simply Chilling
“Such a psychological approach implies a range of possible meanings, few of them untroubling from the point of view of gender equality. This striking production by director Andy Morton and associate director Priscilla Jackman is having none of that….
In avoiding lavishness, this production says more through plainness, dramatic power and imaginative musicality, and is a rare chance to hear a 20th century masterpiece.”
Peter McCallam
Sydney Morning Herald
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A Power-packed psychological opera squeezed into just 60minutes, and manages to strike a contemporary #MeToo chord and questions of gender-based agency
“Rather than shy from that disconnection from reality that opera offers, Directors Andy Morton and Priscilla Jackman – directing together for the first time – have staged Bluebeard’s Castle contemporaneously, and purposefully stark. There are no foiling illusions here.
Where this opera really finds its own definition, is in its stark staging…It is low cost and high impact and in some ways instructive that opera need not be limited by spectacular ‘over-staging’ that comes with equally spectacular budgets. … but this combination of lightening and movement – and with not a door in sight – is incredibly transportive and in-sync with the tone of Bartok’s libretto”
Gina Fairley
Performing Arts Hub
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Béla Bartók’s only opera, first performed in 1918, sounds glorious and is astutely staged for 21st-century audiences.
“Andy Morton and Priscilla Jackman’s production for Opera Australia makes two important decisions that are evident immediately. The first is to include the spoken prologue, sometimes omitted, and the second is to have those words spoken by a woman, when they are usually delivered by a male voice…
Director Morton and Associate Director Jackman’s…staging, clearly comes from rigorous, persuasive thinking about the piece.
The sparseness of the setting suits the uncompromising approach to the work. It also puts Bartók’s extraordinarily sensual, dramatically vivid score to the fore. (There’s a reason why Bluebeard’s Castle is frequently performed in concert.) The opera lasts barely 60 minutes, which is probably just as well given the intensity of the experience. It is breath-holding, edge-of-the-seat stuff.”
Deborah Jones
Limelight
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A triumph in miniature: Bluebeard’s Castle at Opera Australia
“Given a year in which Opera Australia is playing ultra-safe … a new local production of Bluebeard might be seen as heroic. Sadly, this triumph gets only four performances… And so many debuts… the two singers played their 21st-century roles to near-perfection
and directors Andy Morton and Priscilla Jackman have never led main-stage opera productions in the Sydney Opera House before.
Jeremy Eccles
Bachtrack
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Psychological thriller, opera style
“Director Andy Morton and Associate Director Priscilla Jackman made the brilliant artistic decision to keep everything in this production pared back except Béla Bartók’s genius score, making the total effect intense, intimate and profoundly impactful.”
Alicia Tripp
The Plus Ones
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Bartók’s opera as a #MeToo thriller
Opera Australia, on March 1, unveiled its short Sydney season of Bluebeard’s Castle, as a #MeToo-era thriller. As associate director Priscilla Jackman explained to me in an interview, as our latest Parliament House scandals broke: ‘No opera could be more important at this moment.’ Jackman and the director, Andy Morton, have sought to put aside the misogynist ‘museum piece’ of 1918, and to reframe the story to confront 2021’s difficult subjects: sexual violence, consent, coercion, and victimhood. Indeed, they wanted to bring the violence they heard in Bartók’s music directly on to the stage.
The opera’s final scene pushes way beyond the enigmatic ending conceived in 1918…in a powerful new vision, all four wives leave the stifling castle, walking silhouetted towards the bright light of hope.
The surge and repose of the ‘mystery play of the mind’ intended by the librettist Balázs has, in Morton’s and Jackman’s hands, become a thriller of escalating power right to the end. The very vividness of Bartók’s music, originally focused upon Bluebeard’s loneliness, effectively underscores this alternative on-stage ending. And the masked audience’s reception of this première? Applause all round, but we older men looked worried.
Malcolm Gillies
Australian Book Review