ENO’s coupling of Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is unconventional but inspired.

Where Bluebeard throbs darkly with a slow-burning fuse, the Rite pulsates with instinctual life (enhanced here by the physicality of Michael Keegan-Dolan’s choreography). Yet the works have much in common too: barbaric and primeval, both plumb the brutish wellsprings of human nature.

Daniel Kramer’s sinister production of Bluebeard, designed by Giles Cadle, gradually reveals the secretive nobleman to be an obsessive sex-killer, perhaps a Sutcliffe or a West. The fifth door, rather than opening onto expansive domains, is unlocked to expose a dysfunctional Josef Fritzl-like family, fathered by Bluebeard.

There are two problems with the production, however. One is that some of Bluebeard’s gesturing is frankly naff. The other is that his representation as a psychotic serial killer limits the universal resonances of the work: Bluebeard’s dark secrets symbolise the emotional and psychological barriers erected by all men in their relationships with women.

The saturnine presence of the central character is evoked by the aptly sepulchral tones of Clive Bayley, while Michaela Martens is an engaging Judith. Edward Gardner’s conducting of both scores is alert and forceful.
To 28 November. Information: 0871 911 0200; www.eno.org