Duke Bluebeard's Castle / Erwartung, Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Bartok's 'Duke Bluebeard's Castle' and Schoenberg's Erwartung are turning into a kind of modern Cav-and- Pag, though one questions the running order; the Bartok is the longer piece and ends much more conclusively.

Bartok's 'Duke Bluebeard's Castle' and Schoenberg's Erwartung are turning into a kind of modern Cav-and- Pag, though one questions the running order; the Bartok is the longer piece and ends much more conclusively. Also, they are aesthetically far distant from each other - though, on reflection, so are Leoncavallo's powerful verismo vignette and Mascagni's cheap little shocker.

The director, André Engel, chose radically different approaches in his productions for Scottish Opera. Bluebeard was darkly poetic, graphic, even beautiful in a wistful way. There was a real castle interior, with real doors that really opened to show their sinister secrets, and later a lake with a boat. Gales of dry ice produced a vaguely Pre-Raphaelite atmosphere (the designer was Nicky Rieti).

Erwartung, on the other hand, was set in one of those budget hotels that provide a bed and not much else. A forest was visible through the windows, and - a surprise - the murdered husband was physically present, dragged out from behind the bed as though in a tale by Agatha Christie. The woman (sung by Renate Behle, wild, hypersthenic, prodigious) was otherwise merely on a bad trip, visualising the horrors of the score in a cold modern ambience. She did not look like an abandoned waif, but was handsome and soignée in a red frock and blonde wig, and even took things from a vanity case and began making up her face. The effect was to focus Schoenberg's nightmare more sharply than ever.

The spoken preface to Bluebeard, seldom heard, was declaimed by Bill Paterson in English rhyming couplets straight out of Rupert Bear. The performances of Michele Kalmandi as Bluebeard and Andrea Szanto as Judith more than made up for it. Both were singing in their native Hungarian; this Bluebeard was a modest, dignified figure, wearily resigned to the fate of his latest marriage, and all his marriages.

Szanto looked sumptuous in a long dress of grey silk. She was a flowing, physical presence, gesturing spaciously, recoiling, submitting, kneeling, projecting courage and love with her big mezzo, rich and resonant in the lowest register. She had enough economy and restraint to render the big outbursts - her cry when she found the garden flowers dripping with blood - heart-stopping. When she joined the sad little band of former wives, sipping tea under their bridal veils, you wept.

Something is happening in Scotland that should go on record. Scottish audiences used to clap glumly and then skulk off into the night. Lately, there have been shouts, cheers and whistles - even in Glasgow, that most Scottish of Scottish cities. Both operas were cheered, and Richard Armstrong and the orchestra, whose playing was so solid and forceful, Bartok's vivid orchestration coming across with utmost clarity, were also, rightly, very well received. A fine testimonial for Scottish Opera, still clearly able to scale the heights in their time of financial peril.

Last performance tomorrow night (0141-332 9000)