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Opera by Benjamin Britten

The Turn of the Screw is a 20th century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, based on the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. It concerns a young, inexperienced Governess sent to a country house to care for two children, whom she is gradually convinced have been corrupted by the ghosts of a previous manservant and governess. The drama grows increasingly tense, with a tragic outcome. It was described by the "Guardian" as one of the most dramatically appealing of Britten's operas, and by music professor Peter Evans as "Britten's most intricately organized opera". It is in two acts of eight scenes each, with a prologue that ends with the introduction of a twelve note 'Screw' theme. Each scene is preceded by a variation on that theme. Several other related leitmotifs occur through the opera. Typically of Britten, the music mixes tonality and dissonance.

The opera was commissioned by the Venice Biennale, written in four months, and given its world premiere on 14 September 1954, at the Teatro La Fenice, Venice, and three years later Glyndebourne Touring Opera toured the UK with their new production of the work before reviving it in 2007 at their summer festival, Glyndebourne Festival Opera. Opera Queensland's staged Neil Armfield's production in 2005 which featured the solo professional operatic debut of Kate Miller Heidke as Flora. Los Angeles Opera performed the Glyndebourne Touring Opera production of the work in 2011 under music director James Conlon. OperaUpClose reframed the opera in their 2011 production, the story being told from the point of the view of the Governess as a patient in an asylum. It is left unclear as to whether the story stems completely from her mind or whether she arrived there after her experiences in the Bly house. Opera Moderne produced the work in 2012 at Symphony Space in New York under the stage direction of Luke Leonard. Opera Holland Park received positive reviews of their presentation of the work in six performances in summer 2014. For a limited run in 2018, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre presented a co production with the English National Opera, directed by Timothy Sheader and conducted by Toby Purser. On 6 June 2021, a version by OperaGlass Works was broadcast by BBC4. The new staging of the opera, at Wilton's Music Hall, London, had been scheduled for a run in March 2020, but this was prevented by the lockdown. Instead, the performance was reworked as a film, shot on location at the Victorian music hall. The whole space of the venue, not just the stage, was used to tell the story.

A male Prologue tells of the "curious story" he has in a faded manuscript, written by a young, unnamed Governess to two children, "long ago". She had been hired by their uncle and guardian in London, "young bold, offhand and gay" and too busy with "affairs, travel, friends, visits" to care for them. When he stipulates that she is never to bother him about the children, never to write, but to be silent, the "Screw" theme is heard in fragments then, as she accepts, in full, followed by its first variation, suggestive of a coach.

(Scene 1 The Journey) In the coach, the Governess is apprehensive about her new position ("O why, why did I come?" a motif recurring throughout the opera). (Scene 2 The Welcome) When she arrives at Bly, the housekeeper Mrs. Grose greets her, and the children bow and curtsy as they have been rehearsed. The Governess sings that she begins to love Bly, now her home, Mrs Grose that the lively children will do better with a young, clever person like her. (Scene 3 The Letter) A letter from Miles' school arrives. Mrs Grose muses that now all will be well, but the letter says Miles has been expelled, giving only a vague "injury to his friends" as reason. Mrs Grose considers it normal for a boy sometimes to be "wild", but they agree that Miles can not be "bad". Hearing the children sing "Lavender's blue" together reassures the women, and the Governess decides to ignore the letter. (Scene 4 The Tower) Walking in the grounds in the evening (after a variation suggesting birdsong), the Governess sings about their beauty and the charm of the children. Setting aside her fears about footsteps she has heard outside her door and cries in the night, she wishes only that she could impress the uncle. Suddenly, she spots a man on a tower of the house (to the sound of a celesta). He disappears and she wonders who it can be ("Who is it? Who?"). (Scene 5 The Window) In the house, the children sing "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" (to the grotesque, syncopated beat of the previous variation) and the Governess sees the man again, looking in through a window. Frightened, she asks Mrs. Grose about him, and when she describes him, the housekeeper bursts out, "Dear God, is there no end to his dreadful ways?" (a motif recurring from here on) It is Peter Quint, the former valet at Bly. Mrs. Grose says "It was not for me to say I had only to see to the house" but ambiguously that Quint "was free with" Miles, and with Miss Jessel, the well born and beautiful previous governess, and "had his will, morning and night." Mrs Grose feared him and didn't act. Miss Jessel left the house "to die." The Governess is startled to learn that Quint has died too, in a fall on an icy road. She rededicates herself to protecting the children "that they may see and know nothing" (to the " O why did I come?" theme). (Scene 6 The Lesson) The next morning, Miles is learning Latin ("Many nouns in is we find, to the masculine are assigned"), when he unexpectedly sings a sad song, "Malo", based on the meanings of the Latin word, another recurring motif. (Scene 7 The Lake) By the side of Bly's lake, Flora, studying geography with the Governess, names seas of the world. Invited to name the lake, she dramatically calls it the Dead Sea. As she sings a strange lullaby ("Today by the dead salt sea") to her doll, the Governess suddenly sees a woman across the lake (to the sound of a gong). Realising it is the ghost of Miss Jessel, she sends Flora home to safety and sings that it is far worse than she dreamed and that the children are "lost". (Scene 8 At Night) Miles has slipped outside in his nightclothes, and from the tower Quint sings beguilingly to him ("Miles! Miles!" a variant of "O why did I come") and of mysteries ("I am all things strange and bold") while Miss Jessel sings to Flora to come to her to see "all those we have wept for together". The Governess and Mrs. Grose interrupt them and the ghosts depart. Miles tells the Governess, "You see, I am bad, aren't I?" The line "The ceremony of innocence is drowned" sung by Quint and Miss Jessel, is taken from the poem "The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats.

YearCast:Prologue,Governess,Mrs Grose,Miles,Flora,Peter Quint,Miss JesselConductor,opera house and orchestraLabel1955Peter Pears,Jennifer Vyvyan,Joan Cross,David Hemmings,Olive Dyer,Peter Pears,Arda MandikianBenjamin Britten,London Symphony OrchestraDecca,Cat: 4256721981Philip Langridge,Helen Donath,Ava June,Michael Ginn,Lillian Watson,Robert Tear,Heather HarperColin Davis,Covent Garden Opera House OrchestraPhilips,Cat:446 325 21993Philip Langridge,Felicity Lott,Phyllis Cannan,Sam Pay,Eileen Hulse,Philip Langridge,Nadine SecundeSteuart Bedford,Aldeburgh Festival EnsembleNaxos,Cat: 8.660109 102002Ian Bostridge,Joan Rodgers,Jane Henschel,Julian Leang,Caroline Wise,Ian Bostridge,Vivian TierneyDaniel Harding,Mahler Chamber OrchestraVirgin,Cat: 545521 2