Bluebeard's Castle

By Bela Bartok, Directed by Eleanor Burke, Grimeborn Festival, Arcola & The Asylum Chapel, London, 2022

DESIGNING & MAKING BLUEBEARD

Eleanor and I were working on Bluebeard throughout 2020-2021. We wanted to design a site-specific, eco-friendly set, inspired by an artist's studio and to collaborate with Nina Brabbins, an artist working with beach-combed materials. My challenge was to bring these strands together and create a narrative that would incorporate the found materials into the opera with narrative integrity. Hence setting the opera on the cliffs by the sea... where Bluebeard works with ropes and nets and bric-a-brac combed from beaches. The claustrophobia of lockdown has also has an influence on this design - Bluebeard's castle has become a small enclosed bedroom/studio to contain the action. The objects, furniture pieces and artworks in the room are the doors that Judith opens.

The set is made entirely from reclaimed wooden planks (the window, the desk, stool, the sink and the chest). Nina made the four garments for the last scene, that represent Bluebeard's wives. We also collaborated on the lamp for the 3rd door. Bea Viña assisted me on the seaweed for the window and sourcing the sheets, that I then turned into the bloody bed scene. Issy Pritchard textured and painted the sink to match the crumbling Asylum chapel walls. Three models posed for photographs with the garments to symbolise the presence of the 3 dead lovers, these photographs were hidden in the chest along with the garments.