Last Updated on October 16, 2024
Britten in the Shadows
The nights are drawing in, there’s a chill in the air and it’s Halloween in a few weeks so it seems very fitting that there is a new production of Benjamin Britten’s spine-tingling two-act chamber opera “The Turn of the Screw” opening at the Coliseum.
The Turn of the Screw with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper is based on Henry James’s 1898 novella of the same name and tells the story of a young governess hired to care for two orphaned children, Miles and Flora, at Bly, a remote English country house. As the story unfolds, the governess becomes convinced that the children are being influenced by the ghosts of two former employees – Peter Quint, the valet, and Miss Jessel, the previous governess.
“The Turn of the Screw” premiered on September 14, 1954, at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice as part of the Venice Biennale. This production is directed and designed by Isabella Bywater whose production for ENO of Henryk Górecki’s popular Third Symphony received good notices. The opera explores themes of innocence, corruption, and the supernatural with an intentionally ambiguous narrative, leaving open the question of whether the ghosts are real or figments of the Governess’s imagination. Bywater locates the opera in an institution in the early 1960s where the Governess ends up being incarcerated with the scenes in Bly thirty years before being presented as a flashback. In principle, this is a strong way to frame the story as it leaves the conundrum at the centre of the story open-ended.
Bywater’s set for The Turn of the Screw runs along three horizontal lines. At the rear is a backdrop of bare tree branches rising gloomily above the rest of the set. In the middle is a grim grey institutional wall with a couple of metal-framed beds in front. This zone also functions as the children’s nursery and the Governess’ sleeping area. At the front of the stage is another wall with two doorways inset. This wall runs on a track allowing for the setting of the institution’s and the Governess’ offices. I found the design confusing and combined with lighting that was often murky, characters were too often left in shadow, sometimes leading to uncertainty about who was singing. Bywater also uses projection to take us around Bly’s interior and gardens. The camera is handheld giving the excellent footage a contemporary horror feel, but there is no screen and the picture appears on the uneven contours of the set further adding to the visual confusion.
Fortunately, the music side of things was excellent. The opera opens with a prologue that sets the scene, beautifully sung by tenor Alan Oke who effortlessly inhabits the Peter Pears school of Britten singing.
Irish soprano Ailish Tynan, decked out in a frumpy salmon-pink patterned frock in the role of the unnamed Governess, has a delicate voice with a tonal purity that brings out the naivety and innocence of the character.
Soprano Gweneth Ann Rand is well cast as Mrs Grose, the housekeeper, a woman aware of her limitations but with a motherly sense of care for the children and the Governess that is expressed through the warm grain of her voice.
In the role of Miss Jessel former ENO Harewood artist soprano Eleanor Dennis gives a performance of power and intensity as she grapples with the consequences of her corruption by tenor Robert Murray’s Peter Quint. Murray is in turn seductive and controlling, using the insinuating twists and turns of the character’s snakelike scalar melodies to bring his victims into his orbit and ultimately, to destroy them. It’s a deliciously evil performance.
The two children are excellent, coping well with the chromatic challenges of Britten’s score. Jerry Louth is convincing as Miles, a boy struggling with demons no child should have to experience; and Victoria Nekhaenko’s Flora transitions from a puppy-like devotion to the Governess to a full-throttled furious rejection, flouncing off with aplomb.
Britten’s score is written for a chamber ensemble of just 13 players. The musicians of the ENO house band, under the baton of house debutant conductor Duncan Ward, filled the cavernous Coliseum’s acoustic with the composer’s threateningly propulsive percussive thrum; anxious flurries of notes from the upper and lower woodwinds (I do love a bass clarinet) and brass helped create a suitably febrile and neurotic sonic backdrop for the singers.
There is plenty to enjoy about this production of The Turn of the Screw and it is worth seeing, but it didn’t create that existential feeling of unease in me or make the emotional connection that the music demands.
The Turn of the Screw runs from 11th – 31 October 2024
English National Opera
London Coliseum
St Martin’s Lane,
London WC2N 4ES