Bartok's only opera, Duke Bluebeard's Castle, has finally made it to the Royal Opera, 90 years after it was written. The hour long one-acter forms the first half of a double bill with Schoenberg's monodrama Erwartung in a staging by Willy Decker, designed by John McFarlane.

Decker unambiguously yokes the two works together. The unnamed woman who is the protagonist of Erwartung emerges from the gigantic door that closed on Bluebeard's wives at the end of the Bartok, and wanders through the same detritus, the shards of a life, that litters the stage throughout that opera too.

She also wears the same red dress as Bluebeard's Judith, and is stalked during her monologue by an exact double of Bluebeard himself.

At the climax of the work, she stabs that man and later stabs him again for good measure. What is conventionally a work of expressionist neurosis and ambiguity is transformed into a psychotic revenge tragedy.

Nothing is so explicit in Bluebeard's Castle. In any case, its text is so larded with symbolism that adding extra layers would be superfluous.

As Judith demands the opening of each of the seven doors in Bluebeard's castle in turn, what she finds there is neatly touched in: Bluebeard's hands are drenched in blood after she unlocks his torture chamber, and when behind the fifth door she beholds his kingdom laid out before her, a gigantic sun appears at the back of the stage, gradually filling with blood.

Decker presents Bluebeard himself as more of a lost soul than a serial wife killer, suggesting that as Judith peels back the layers of his past, he is no surer than she is of what they will find.

Willard White's performance is compelling to watch, less convincing to hear; his voice not dark-toned enough to carry the full baleful weight of Bluebeard's gnomic pronouncements. Katarina Dalayman's Judith sounds gorgeously appealing, but she conveys a rather prim presence on stage.

In Erwartung, Inge Nielsen negotiates the fearsome difficulties of Schoenberg's score with amazing confidence. The role really needs the power of Brunnhilde wedded to the agility of the Queen of the Night; Nielsen is more of the latter, but her performance and her dramatic commitment are rare enough.

It is a pair of operas, too, in which the orchestra takes a leading role. Under Lothar Zagrosek, the playing is accurate and responsive, but lacking in real opulence; and perhaps both Bluebeard and Erwartung make more of an impact in a concert performance than on stage.

· Until March 11. Box office: 020-7304 4000. Broadcast on Radio 3 on March 5.