Daniel Kramer’s new production for English National Opera of Bartok’s Bluebeard is paired here with yet another version of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring.

Duke Bluebeard brings his new bride to his gloomy home. In the dim light she sees seven locked doors, which he says must never be opened, but she insists, and one by one he hands over the keys. The first room is a torture chamber. Blood is everywhere, as in the armoury that follows, the treasure house, on the flowers of the hidden garden, and even in the room he calls his ‘kingdom’. Here we find eight children confined in boxes, an unhappy invention of Kramer’s that brings to mind the recent Josef Fritzl horror story from Austria. The final door reveals three other wives. In the original story they are awesomely beautiful, but Kramer has picked them to be the opposite. Judith will complete the set of four.

Clive Bayley’s well-sung Bluebeard (above) is a repulsive creature, part arrogant monster, part craving wimp who is constantly begging the unfortunate Judith – Michaela Martens – to love him. But he seems frightened of intimacy, except with a terrified victim. In Kramer’s finale the four wives lie before him, skirts drawn up, knees up and wide apart. With a sword he raises Judith’s skirt even higher, and makes to penetrate her with it. Does he do this, and if so why? We never know, as Kramer chickens out; the stage is black, the work is over. It’s a powerful piece, marred by a tasteless, publicity-craving production.

Irish choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan has also set out to shock in his version of Nijinsky’s 1913 original, in which a female is chosen by men to be a sacrifice at a spring ceremony. There is an Irish feel here, with a Sage and a Hag added to the event. It starts brilliantly, with three girls following the Hag on to the stage on bicycles. Then the men, who have been sitting in line, leap into a terrific, stomping dance around the boxes they have been carrying. These contain papier-mâché dogs’ heads which they put on, while the girls for a time wear hares’ heads.

The dance fits the music superbly, but from here things deteriorate. The men uncoil a colourful rope made out of dresses. They strip naked, stack their clothes at the front of the stage, and then put the flimsy dresses on. I have no objection to nudity, but I’m not sure what point is being made, and the dresses just make them look silly. Daphne Strothmann’s dance as The Chosen One, which follows, is one of the highlights of this bizarre piece.

Until November 28. Box office: 0871 911 0200 (www.eno.org).