“The ceremony of innocence is drowned.” Like Henry James’ novella which inspired Britten’s opera, the line from W.B. Yeats’ The Second Coming unsettles the mind long after it is heard: and Britten’s keen setting of these words, central to his vision of The Turn of the Screw, ensure they revolve round your head for days afterwards. The Turn of the Screw is one of opera’s most frightening faces: a tale of possessed children, malevolent ghosts and well-intentioned yet powerless adults, all abandoned or trapped by design in a lonely, luxurious house where evil lurks unchallenged.
Nevertheless, this opera is never quite as terrifying as James’ original novella, which builds its eeriness inside the reader’s imagination in an atmosphere of mounting hysteria, never quite defining what has actually happened, just darkening it enough to be tantalisingly horrific. To create his opera, Britten decided to embody James’ ghosts on stage, answering one of the story’s most fascinating questions with blunt immediacy. But what Britten sacrificed in mystery, he repaid in creativity. As a straight rendition of James, this opera is necessarily a failure: but as a creative response to James, Britten’s Turn of the Screw is a fascinating, disturbing masterpiece.
Jonathan Kent’s production, revived by Francesca Gilpin for the 2014 Glyndebourne Tour (dedicated to the late Sir George Christie), is as cunning as it is beautiful, thanks to Paul Brown’s brilliant design, sensitively incorporating projections. Over a revolving stage, an oversized plate glass window rotates throughout to suggest different rooms (and even the lake), while a gnarled, dead tree branch (perhaps symbolic of other things twisted and dead at Bly) moves us smoothly indoors and outdoors. Playing elegant games of perspective, Flora’s dollshouse in the drawing-room becomes Bly at a distance for the lake scene, heightening an overall sense of stylised surrealism which fits the work perfectly. Myfanwy Piper’s libretto is neurotically beautiful; living adults express themselves hesitantly, while the children seem old beyond their years, and the ghosts’ language is soaked in literary allusions and supernatural oddities. Leo McFall, conducting the Glyndebourne Tour Orchestra, ratchets up the tension at every opportunity, particularly in the opening of Act II, whose beautiful, dark delirium feels fraught with meaning.
Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw gives her Governess maternal warmth, steely determination and a sense of moral conviction in her struggle. Romaniw sings with fluid clarity, particularly fine in her scenes with Miss Jessel, and her final moment with Miles, whom she comforts desperately: cleverly, her shadow appears to be strangling him, while her body clings to him. Anne Mason is a sturdy, believable Mrs Grose, absolutely coming into her own at her defiantly emphatic, “No, Mr Quint, I did not like your ways.” Britten had to curtail Mrs Grose’s character from James’ original: there is not much left in the role beyond the unwitting faithful retainer, but Mason gives Mrs Grose as much roundness as she can, with lovely physical detailing as she rests her aching bones in an armchair, or plays cat’s cradle with Flora.