At Wilton’s Music Hall, a ghost light for Britten’s ghost story

By Mark Pullinger, 28 January 2021

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“we brush past barley-sugar twisted pillars and rusty pipes, clamber the rickety staircases”

Reviewed at Wilton's Music Hall, London on 26 January 2021

Britten, The Turn of the Screw

OperaGlass Works

John Wilson, Conductor

Selina Cadell, Director

Tom Piper, Set Designer

Rosalind Ebbutt, Costume Designer

Lewis Hannaby, Lighting Designer

Eliza Thompson, Director

Dominic Best, Co-director

Robert Murray, Peter Quint, The Prologue

Rhian Lois, Governess

Gweneth-Ann Rand, Mrs Grose

Francesca Chiejina, Miss Jessel

Leo Jemison, Miles

Alys Mererid Roberts, Flora

Devilishly good fun: The Rake's Progress

Benjamin Poore, 17th November

A compelling and energetic debut production from a new opera company in the raddled surroundings of Wilton's Music Hall.

****1

L’Orfeo, the world’s first great opera, premieres at Glyndebourne

Roy Westbrook, 14th June

One element of the Orpheus myth is about creativity, so at Glyndebourne, William Kentridge sets Monteverdi’s opera in an artist's studio,

****1

Monteverdi and Ulisse return happily to Garsington Opera

David Karlin, 12th June

Laurence Cummings and John Caird’s second Garsington exploration of the operas of Monteverdi brims with wonderfully playing and singing in an attractive setting.

****1

Aldeburgh Festival dives in at the deep end with Pelléas et Mélisande

Eleanor Knight, 12th June

Rory Kinnear directs a minimally semi-staged performance of Debussy's problematic opera at Snape Maltings, but Ryan Wigglesworth and the BBC Scottish SO provide the detail.

****1

Darkness without passion: Damiano Michieletto’s Carmen at La Scala

Laura Servidei, 12th June

Despite Michieletto's visual gloom, the evening is redeemed by Myung-whun Chung’s masterful conducting and a cast that brings conviction to a production that rarely trusts the opera’s own dramatic power.

**111

A thrilling Slavic Iolanta from Chișinău

Peter Quantrill, 11th June

Young voices shine in Tchaikovsky's last opera in a new and rustic updating by Moldovan director Slava Sambriș.

****1

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Mark Pullinger

Mark has been a Bachtrack editor since 2014. He is also an experienced critic, writing hundreds of reviews for the site, as well as a freelancer writing for other magazines and newspapers. He also writes programme notes and blogs on Substack. Mark has a particular passion for the operas of Verdi as well as Russian and French repertoire. Outside the concert hall and opera house, Mark enjoys cooking and travel and is probably at his happiest let loose in a French patisserie or a Viennese coffee house.