© Manuel Harlan / ENO
The Turn of the Screw is a 1954 chamber opera by Benjamin Britten, with Myfanwy Piper’s libretto being based on Henry James’ eponymous novella of 1898. Told across a Prologue and sixteen scenes, with each of these being preceded by a variation on the twelve-note ‘Screw’ theme, it has been described as one of the most dramatically appealing of all English operas.
Set in an English country house in Bly, originally in the middle of the nineteenth century, it tells of a young Governess who is employed there to care for two children by their uncle and guardian. He, being busy in London, has instructed her never to write to him about the youngsters, never to inquire about the history of Bly House and never to abandon the children.
As the Governess, who is never named, meets the young Miles and Flora, and housekeeper Mrs Grose, all seems fine. However, a letter soon arrives informing the Governess that Miles has been expelled from school, which she ignores believing him to be too innocent to have done anything that might warrant expulsion. Meanwhile, she spies a pale-faced man standing on a tower of the house and then staring through a window. Mrs Grose explains that Peter Quint, the former valet at Bly House, had sexual relations with the former governess Miss Jessel, and both seemed to have inappropriately close relationships with the children before they died. What follows becomes a very personal battle between the Governess and the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessel (who are both seen with increasing regularity) for the very souls of the children, with the outcomes for each of the youngsters being quite different.
Victoria Nekhaenko, Jerry Louth, Gweneth Ann Rand, Ailish Tynan, ENO’s The Turn of the Screw 2024 © Manuel Harlan
This is the third production of The Turn of the Screw that English National Opera has presented in the past fifteen years, with the last one being staged at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in 2018. It falls on the seventieth anniversary of the first performances of the opera, which the composer conducted himself, when the English Opera Group staged the work at La Fenice on 14 September 1954 and the Sadler’s Wells Theatre on 6 October.
Isabella Bywater has designed ENO productions, such as La bohème and L’elisir d’amore, before. On this occasion, however, she is both the director and designer, and the resulting fusion of the two elements produces dividends. The set presents a large hall-like area, with a back wall that is set at a diagonal to the stage. In front of this another room, a study, slides on and off as the drama requires. The opera involves interior and exterior locations and can switch between them in an instant. Bywater enables the necessary changes to take place through the use of projections that appear on the set, courtesy of John Driscoll. As the Governess walks in the grounds contemplating their beauty, there are images of flourishing foliage, and when she and Flora are by the lake, water appears to lap over the entire structure. When Miles leaves the house we feel as if we are walking down a ‘spiral’ staircase as the projections show things from his point of view.
A candle in a revolving lantern sends flickering images onto the wall that, as they turn, show a devil with a pitchfork chasing a boy under the moon. The set’s overall aesthetic seems reminiscent of the paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi, whose interiors of muted colours often convey a feeling of disconcertion (many designers for Ibsen’s plays take inspiration from the artist). Nevertheless, one of the images that looks most like his paintings comes when Miles plays the piano, as a far warmer shaft of light, courtesy of lighting designer Paul Anderson, falls across the scene.
When the children go to church we witness interior and exterior scenes simultaneously, as Miles and Flora become a thurifer and server processing down the central hall as if it is an aisle. At the same time, disconcerting images of a graveyard are projected onto the set, with the resulting tension between light and life and darkness and death seeming well suited to portraying a scene that can feel both innocent and sinister.
Eleanor Dennis, Robert Murray, Ailish Tynan, ENO’s The Turn of the Screw 2024 © Manuel Harlan
The hall of the main set can be a general area of the house, or Miles and Flora’s bedroom as it contains two beds. It also, however, becomes a hospital-like institution, in which on occasions we see the Governess, a doctor, nurse and other patient. This introduces another dimension because in hospitals it is very easy to spy a stranger at a door or walking down a corridor. There may a legitimate reason for them to be there, but seeing them can still be disconcerting, and this raises many questions concerning the Governess’s early sightings of Quint.
The wider point is that the Governess is in this institution in the 1960s, recalling what happened when she worked at Bly thirty years earlier through a series of flashbacks. However, while the implication is that possible mental health issues on her part led her to imagine Quint and Miss Jessel all along, it is possible to reach another conclusion. Could it not be that the Governess’s own struggles have made it all too easy for her to be dismissed by others as merely hallucinating? This certainly ties in with her complaint towards the start of Act II that no-one would ever believe her, and that even Mrs Grose has her doubts.
Duncan Ward’s conducting of the thirteen-strong orchestra is quite special, as the remarkable levels of clarity he achieves paradoxically give everything an even more ghostly edge (Charlotte Corderoy wields the baton on 29 and 31 October). Ailish Tynan is outstanding as the Governess as her impassioned soprano and superb acting convey her anguish in all its facets. Gweneth Ann Rand reveals her own warm soprano and caring persona as Mrs Grose, while Alan Oke gets the evening off to a strong start as he sings the Prologue.
Robert Murray and Eleanor Dennis are highly convincing as the ghosts Quint and Miss Jessel respectively, with Murray drawing on all of his experience in the part (which he also took for Garsington Opera in 2022) and Dennis revealing an extremely rich soprano. Finally, Jerry Louth and Victoria Nekhaenko give highly accomplished performances as Miles and Flora (they share the roles over the run with Nicolai Flutter and Holly Hylton), and the result is an extremely powerful evening at the London Coliseum.
By Sam Smith
The Turn of the Screw | 11 - 31 October 2024 | London Coliseum
the 13 of October, 2024 | Print
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