When Henry James wrote his creepy ghost story The Turn of the Screw in 1898, it reflected the passion of its time for death and communicating with the afterlife, yet one of its major themes was also uncannily predictive. It was many years before child abuse became generally recognised, yet the the story tells of an unnamed governess’s attempts to protect two children in her charge from the other-worldly evil desires of ghosts. James refers to this as a “another turn of the screw of ordinary human virtue,” which is where the title comes from.
The original story is rather ponderously written and the writer’s desire for mystery makes it all rather difficult to understand but in moving the setting to the 1960s, the director Isabella Bywater has added greatly to its appeal without losing the chilling puzzle posed by its source. The book details the governess’s account of the strange happenings, starting with the unseemly influence exerted on the children Miles and Flora by her predecessor and a valet which seems to be continued by their ghosts.
Both the book and the opera emphasize that this is only the governess’s interpretation, leaving it to the readers and the audience to decide what really happened. Benjamin Britten and his librettist Myfanwy Piper did a good job in updating Henry James’ work when the opera was put together in 1954, and Bywater has now completed the process with a production suitable for today.
Her way of achieving this includes placing the governess in a sanatorium in her later years and telling her own disturbing account. With the aid of back projections, the scene blurs very effectively into her memories of the country house at Bly where the alleged events took place.
In telling the story, the director is aided by excellent performances, particularly from Irish soprano Ailish Tynan as the governess and Victoria Nekhaenko and Jerry Louth as the children Flora and Miles. Tynan sings with great power, convincingly expressing her concern for her charges, while the 12-year-old Jerry Louth not only has a beautiful treble voice but exhibits an astonishingly mature ability to convey the effects of the valet’s dubious interest in him.
For once, I find Benjamin Britten’s often eerie music appropriate for the subject matter and conductor Duncan Ward generally manages to get a good balance between orchestra and singers. Still a little confusing but generally an excellent new production of a difficult opera.
The Turn of the Screw is playing at the London Coliseum until 31 October.
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