Welsh National Opera’s 80th-anniversary season opens with a grim but compelling double bill of Bartók’s *Bluebeard’s Castle* and Stravinsky’s *Oedipus Rex*. Joe Hill-Gibbins’s claustrophobic productions explore secrecy, violence and inescapable fate, with intense performances making the disturbing material powerful rather than merely sensational.

In *Bluebeard’s Castle*, Christine Rice and Nathan Berg create a convincingly intimate Judith and Bluebeard, while the seven doors reveal a meticulously staged psychological descent and 14 former wives. *Oedipus Rex* uses a 35-strong male chorus and stark monumental design, with Peter Hoare praised for portraying Oedipus’s gradual collapse; Lidiya Yankovskaya’s conducting unifies both works despite occasional overactive movement and under-projected narration.