If you think the libretto of Pelléas et Mélisande is impenetrable, try making sense of this: Maurice Maeterlinck’s “prequel” in which Mélisande is one of Bluebeard’s imprisoned wives. They are rescued by his latest victim, Ariane, but refuse to leave their tormentor; they prefer his dark castle to the threat posed by the world outside, to which, at the final curtain, Ariane and faithful nurse return.

Georgette Leblanc, Maeterlinck’s longtime companion, had been disappointed not to get the role of Mélisande in Debussy’s opera in 1902, and there is some feeling that Maeterlinck was offering her a consolation prize – she sang the title-role at the Opéra-Comique premiere in 1907 (he even claimed that the story was in part based on Mme Leblanc’s own experiences). Ariane is seldom offstage – conversely, Bluebeard hardly appears, and has only a few lines to sing. There is very little action as such, although the crowd of angry peasants break in occasionally with threats against their monstrous lord.

The effect is more like a symphonic poem. There are wonderful moments: when Ariane unlocks the doors of the rooms containing gems; when she breaks open the window and lets light into the dungeon; and in the long final scene as she slowly leaves Bluebeard and his harem to their fate. The subject matter – sexual abuse, the victim’s need for their torturer, and the power of suggestion – ought to make the opera attractive for an imaginative theatre director.

Leon Botstein makes the strongest possible case for the opera in this new recording, the BBC SO playing Dukas’s elaborate score with great élan. As Botstein writes in the booklet, the work has a unique “logic of thematic transformation and harmonic invention”. Lori Phillips sings Ariane with great feeling; her voice is rather too similar to that of Patricia Bardon as the Nurse, who also makes a strong impression (the role is curiously like that of the similar character in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten). Of the other wives, not all of whom sing, Laura Vlasak Nolen has the most substantial part as Sélysette, who declares “Oh! Tu es pâle, Mélisande…ta robe est en lambeaux”, as if she were anticipating Pelléas’s words in Debussy’s opera.

It would be easy to ridicule some of the more obvious psychological symbolism with which Maeterlinck has weighed down his story and it was destined to be Dukas’s only completed opera. If you own another recording you may not feel the need for a second version. But if you have never encountered Ariane et Barbe-Bleu it is an instructive and rewarding experience.