Terrific, terrifying Garsington Britten Turn of the Screw

Ed Lyon (Peter Quint) and Leo Jemison (Miles) in Garsington Opera’s The Turn of the Screw. Photograph John Snelling

 "Terrific, terrifying" writes Claire Seymour, who wrote the book on the operas of Benjmain Britten.  "One might describe Christopher Oram’s set for Louisa Muller’s new production of The Turn of the Screw at Garsington as ‘shabby chic’ if it wasn’t so sinister......."

"There are no ‘boundaries’: the interior and exterior of Bly diffuse into one another, trickling and infusing deceptively, like the waters of the lake that lap at the forestage shore, where Miles insouciantly sails his paper boat. The open space is, at first, sparsely populated - just a few abandoned children’s toys: a tricycle-rocking horse, a toy theatre, a hoop-and-sticks, the chalky remnants of a game of hopscotch. Innocent pastimes in which we see the children, Flora and Miles, indulge during the instrumental interludes in which the ‘screw’ theme is twisted ever tauter and tenser.  Progressively, though, the shadows deepen and stretch: illumined by guttering candles, a grand piano casts an imposing silhouette which dances disturbingly with the black forms of human figures, a school desk, as the shores of the lake shatter, and a black pool edged with crooked, crumbling paving stones forms: a stagnant, poisonous pit."

Please read the full review here in Opera Today   If only there were more reviewers who could write as informatively, and analytically as this. 

Britten Turn of the Screw Glyndebourne broadcast analysis

One hardly needs fake country house in a real country house like Glyndebourne. Jonathan Kent's production of Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw, broadcast from Glyndebourne, teases out the sinister levels in this cryptic opera, where the drama lies in the psyches of the protagonists, not in the furnishings. 

Note how quiet Britten's music is, accentuating the disquiet in the narrative. Jakub Hrůša turned 30 only this July, but he's the Chief Conductor of the Prague Philharmonia and has guested everwhere. He conducted an excellent Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne this summer, and conducts Glyndebourne Touring. He completely has the measure of Britten's quirky, discordant style. "Sharp, fixed, strange", as the Governess describes Peter Quint. And so Hrůša's precision brings out the danger in Britten's score. Tight drumbeats mark the beginning of the secret battle, as the children act out Tom, Tom, the Piper's son. Nursery rhymes with a sinister twist. The interludes are particularly expressive, evoking hard glass surfaces, dizzying heights and the ungiving, rock-like hardness at the core of the plot. No chintz here. Hrůša won't please everyone, but that's exactly why his conducting is so good. He's absolutely right  for the tightly coiled anxiety that makes this opera so powerful.  Definitely a conductor to keep track of.  I'm going to buy his CDs.  (photo: Petra Klačková)

Miah Persson is a fantastic Governess. Listen to where she sings Alone, tranquil, serene, her voice soaring ecstatically on the word "alone". Persson's voice is naturally luscious and sensual, hinting at the sexual repression at the root of the character. (Henry James, who wrote the original novel had a brother who was a psychologist when the discipline still equated hysteria with the womb). The Governess sees a shadow, identified only as "he", a detail so subtle it's often missed. Persson sings with such tenderness, you know she 's thinking of the uncle. Hence her distress when she doesn't know who "he" is.

I've rarely heard an In my Labyrinth which combines demure with demented as well as Persson sings it. She keeps the maniacally tight beat, yet with a wild edge, suggesting she'll snap. Her English is so perfect, that you might not know she's not a native speaker, but this only underlines the basic fact that the Governess isn't Establishment. She's most definitely not "among her kind" as the text keeps repeating. That's why she's in awe of the uncle, the house and all it stands for. She wears the uniform of 50's respectability but she hasn't the experience to deal with the madness or evil she finds. Miah Persson's portrayal makes you realize that the Governess is out of place even before she arrived. Effectively, she's trapped in an infernal machine. Kent shows her arriving in a railway carriage (the scenes outside not unlike those around Glyndebourne).

Class and status do matter in this opera. Mrs Grose, The Governess and even Peter Quint are pawns because real authority lies with the remote, sinister uncle. Mrs Grose (admirably played by Susan Bickley) shields behind bucolic subservience until she hears Flora's nightmares. But maybe she's still being manipulated. Miles dies, but what will Flora do in another place and time?  Flora acts up sweetly, but she's no more pure than Miles is. Many productions are fooled. Kent hints at the danger in Flora, by showing how she's very much Miles's partner in the kinky game where the pair ride each other flailing whips. Later, Flora shoves her doll up her jumper, in a truly horrific imitation of pregnancy. Joanna Songi sang the role in 2006 so vocally she's assured, but even better, she can now create a Flora who is sexually potent while playing at being a child. The connection between Songi's Flora, with her head in the sink, and Giselle Allen's Miss Jessel, who drowned, is clear.

Toby Spence's Peter Quint is excellent. It helps that he still looks like a cherub, though he's not as skeletal as Ian Bostridge, or vocally quite so intense. Oddly, he does resemble Thomas Parfitt, who sings Miles, and even more strangely, one of the musicians in the orchestra. The orange hair is in the libretto, hinting at Quint's demonic nature, so it reminds us that Quint's good looks aren't conventional. Spence is so convincing in the role that it's frightening when he hugs Parfitt at curtain call. Of course it's perfectly innocent, because Spence is kind hearted. Normally we'd beam. But after having experienced a performance as unnerving as this we recoil, despite common sense, which itself says something. We've lost our innocence too.

The set, too, is superlative. Kent and his designer, Paul Brown, take their cue from the music. Like the music, simplicity is all, clarity used in a way that confounds the impenetrable elusiveness of meaning. Throughout the libretto, images of windows, glass, vantage points and strange angles, like Quint in the tower. Glass can be both transparent and opaque. It's strong but when it shatters it's lethal. Study the scene where the Governess and Miss Jessel confront each other with a three panel mirror. Who reflects whom?

Paul Brown creates a set that, like the exploding box in Don Giovanni, moves quickly and doesn't impede dramatic action. It keeps twisting and changing, like the plot. Walls fall in and lean dangerously. A central panel looks like a giant window, blocking off interior from exterior, yet shifts as rapidly as perspective shifts in the opera. Only at the very end does the panel turn completely horizontal. Viewed sideways it's revealed as thin and fragile and seems to disappear. Kent and Brown describe it as a "membrane" between the Governess and "the others".

Even the sofas aren't comfortable. These ones travel of their own volition (propelled by an underfloor mechanism). Floor level objects spin in ellipses, panels above bend and twist shape, and mysterious, atmospheric lighting (Mark Henderson).  This is a staging that moves like Britten's music, every bit as elusive as meaning in this most unsettling of operas, where nothing is meant to be quite as it seems. This Turn of the Screw, from Glyndebourne is both classic and groundbreaking and needs to be experienced by anyone wanting to come to terms with ths striking originality of Britten's mind. Altogether, the 2011 production is cast so strongly it would be hard to beat, and Jakub Hrůša's conducting is exceptional. Extremely well directed for film, too, showing a wide rangle of angles - like the plot - and close-ups used for proper effect.

Both production shots copyright Alastair Miles, from Glyndebourne Opera. (Miah Persson as The Governess, Toby Spence and Giselle Allen as Peter Quint and Miss Jessel).

Turn of the Screw - the movie Hickox

When this film of Britten 's The Turn of the Screw was screened on TV in 2004 it put a new twist on the tradition of ghost stories at Xmas. It's so atmospheric that it's not comfortable to watch, but it's full of striking insights.

The music Britten writes around the children leaps about with energy. just like Miles and Flora. Quint wants them because they're "proud, curious, agile,...like a jugglers mate". So this production makes a lot of the incessant movements - wilful, even contrary by turns, so when they have to be still it feels unnatural. They're first seen in a cemetery, solemnly carrying bouquets but first chance they get they're running over the graves, irrepressible.

Bly is a real stately home not a comic book palace. Children in Victorian times lived in sparsely furnished nurseries with natural light and little heating. The idea was that frugality instilled moral values. Scenes in this film are shot in cold, naturally lit rooms, contrasting simplicity with the decadent corruption Quint represents.

When the Governess exclaims "How beautiful it is!", she's not necessarily talking about the ballroom, but perhaps the grave classical elegance of the houses's structure. In this film, she's in the woods around the house, enjoying the beauty of nature. Indoor/outdoor contrasts reflect in Britten's music and themes in the narrative. In this film, the woods are a wonderful simile, because it's winter, with mists and fallen, decaying leaves. The trees are bare, their naked branches like sinister claws grasping at the sky. Significantly, Quint froze to death on an exposed path, and the ghosts appear first outside the building, gradually encroaching into the inner chambers. Perhaps that's why Miles sings the Malo song while fondling chestnuts and bird skulls in his schoolroom.

In the theatre, it's hard to do ghosts because they aren't solid. In this film, there are short, elusive shots - Miss Jessel lying half submerged like Ophelia, Quint face down in mud. But even more frightening are shots where they almost "don't" appear. In one of the scenes where the women and chidlren are indoors, the camera shoots through a window in the roof. The room is neat but paint is peeling off the window frame. And you see the shadow of a head.. Who would be up there on the roof looking in? Can't be human. Later when Quint and Miss Jessel come for the kids, they aren't seen directly - a hand, the hem of a skirt brushing against the floor. It's the children you see, hypnotized. When Miles sings "I am bad" in this production, perhaps he's speaking for Quint, mocking the Governess for saving the boy. In the ENO first production, Miles kissed her, which is shocking enough but completely different.

Film allows wider perspective. The scene where Miles plays the piano to distract the cooing women opens out, allowing Flora a moment to escape. She walks towards Miss Jessel in what seems at first solid ground, then revealed as the waters of the lake. Film also allows flashbacks where Miles's memories are shown. Seeing him play with his mother shows why he's so vulnerable. It also picks up on details in the text which indicate how much he does want to be saved, despite himself. Film also expands the Governess's long monologues, showing how much of the drama does exist in her mind. Telling details, such as the frame that shows her lying down, hair awry, just as Miss Jessel lay, drowned.

Lisa Milne is wonderful. As she approaches Bly her voice rasps with anxiety and fear: she doesn't lose control by any means, but adds frisson. Milne's Governess is highly strung and inexperienced. Maybe that's why the mysterious Guardian picked her? The relationship between the Governess and Guardian is yet another of the shadowings that infuse this opera and make it so powerful. Milne even manages to exude a kind of eager sensuality into the part, which works well. When she sings "In my labyrinthe" she twists and grimaces with the music. In the end, she sings the Malo song so poignantly that you realize what Miles meant by the apple tree and what it means in the Bible.

Mark Padmore's Quint is a smooth operator. He follows Britten's vocal quirks beautifully,, but he's more angel than demon. Gentlemanly elementals may exist but even plain Mrs Grose (Diana Montague) thinks Quint's a lowlife. This production, directed for TV by Katie Michell, allows Catrin Wyn Davies to develop Mis Jessel as a complete personality. Wyn Davies' rich, full voice makes you feel Miss Jessel was a nice person, truly "betrayed" rather than inherently evil. Caroline Wise makes Flora an independent-minded minx, stronger than Miles in some ways. What will become of her when she grows up, even away from Bly? Miles is Nicholas Kirby Johnson, nicely brooding and seductive.

The late Richard Hicox conducts the City of London Sinfonia. Good as the ENO orchestra was, the Sinfonia specialize in precisely defined music like this. Hickox's tempi are brisk. He captures the nervous tension in the music well, and its difficult switchback moods and colours. He's specially good where The Governess, Miles and Quint sing at cross-purposes. Watch this DVD
and see why I don't have much time for safe and bland in this opera.

Paradox : The Turn of the Screw Britten ENO

The paradox about going to opera is that you need to erase your preconception even if you know a work well, in order to take on board what someone else might think about it. Britten's Turn of the Screw is densely packed with unanswerable questions and elusive meanings. It operates on so many levels that straightforward interpretation is perhaps least satisfying.

The Turn of the Screw is about what is not visible. Are Quint and Miss Jessel ghosts? Are they projections of sexual frustration? Is it about the corruption of innocence and the nature of evil? Is Quint even the demon? Or does more evil reside in Miles than we can possibly imagine?

This is an opera about what's not "real" in a tangible sense, so it's a contradiction in terms to present as straightforward. A friend of mine said of the 2007 London premiere of this production that she was "shaken but not stirred". Everything about this opera shakes you but this production doesn't make much of the many deeper levels that make the Turn of the Screw one of the most disturbing and challenging pieces in all Britten's work.

One of the benefits of second-night performances is that singers aren't under such pressure and often sing better. Lauded as the singers may be, they aren't necessarily the best choices for an opera like this where so much rests on what a singer does beyond producing sound. I've often wondered what the Governess might be like? Clearly she's a strong personality, tougher and more proactive than Ellen Orford. She thinks that being capable brings results. Yet the opera shows that even when she seems to beat the odds, she loses what is most important. Rebecca Evans is pretty, which is no demerit, but the Governess is a driven character. Perhaps the fanaticism of a Jane Eyre might enhance the portrayal, since the opera happens in the Governess's head as much as in objective reality, but David McVicar's production doesn't stretch Evans, or the role, to full potential.

Ann Murray's Mrs Grose is a triumph, given that it's a bigger role than most realize, and she's not inthe first flush of youth. Mrs Grose isn't necessarily an older woman, but Murray brings out her maturity and common sense, if not quite the passivity in the character, whose fearfulness prevents her taking a stand. Indeed, Murray almost stole the show, so assured was her performance. Pity that the opera doesn't revolve around her. Nor does it really demand much of Miss Jessel, so Cheryl Baker doesn't need to do much.

Miles, on the other hand, is absolutely crucial. Everything pivots on who he might be and what he represents. Another paradox, for it's almost impossible to imagine a young boy with enough emotional experience to fuully create the part. Is Miles as innocent as the Governess decides from the start he "must" be because he's a child? Even away from Bly, and from the influence of Quint, Miles does bad things to other children and gets kicked out of school. Maybe he's just an abused child enacting on other children, as abused children do, but it's just as likely there's something far more sinister. I used to work with someone who sang Miles when he was young. "It does things to your head," he said.

"I am bad, aren't I," sings Charlie Manton, the Miles in this production, with a mix of boyish charm and calculated insolence. Manton looks young for his age, and his blond curls make him a picturebook image of angelic innocence. Definitely good casting. Manton sings with surprising maturity, carrying out the long and demanding part with ease. But notice what Britten writes into the music. The percussion tells us that Miles is beating the toy horse with ferocious venom, even when he's not riding it. Where does this malevolence come from?

Seeing Manton as Miles, playing the upright piano was for me quite terrifying, reminding me of those photos of Britten himself, playing an upright piano at home as a child, his feet barely able to reach the pedals. He, too, was a curiously adult child. What did Miles mean to him on a deeper psychological level? I wonder, too, how it was for David Hemmings, who sang the first Miles while he was in a kind of relationship with Britten. To the end of his life, Hemmings staunchly defended Britten, who made no indecent advances to him. But Hemmings and several of Britten's other young companions noted that Britten was in some ways even more of a boy than they were, arrested in a pre-pubescent state.

So the opera operates in deliberately ambiguity. The narrative places the blame on Quint but perhaps that's to lead you off the trail. Is Quint the demonic force that controls Miles, or it it an altogether less tangible force? It's rarely noticed why Britten has Quint played by the same singer as the narrator of the prologue. This is crucially important to meaning (particularly as both parts were written for Peter Pears). Think about it, it's scary!

Michael Colvin sang Quint extremely well, with the right sardonic quiver in his delivery, which makes Bostridge's Quint a masterpiece. It's supposed to be unsettling. Colvin, despite red wig, doesn't look like Mrs Grose's description of him, but all the more credit to him for singing the part psychologically right.

Again, McVicar's production doesn't bring out the potential in the role. If you weren't aware, you might think he was one of the various supernumeraries who flit about on stage doing busywork, pulling beds, screens, and other paraphernalia into position. Maybe that's supposed to evoke the idea of an over-stuffed Victorian house, filled with unnecessary labour-intensive clutter, but the setting isn't the story. True, it connects to Victorian ideas of sexual repression, but the menace in the Turn of the Screw is far more universal. Quint first appears in the tower (a phallic symbol), and Miles's pig Latin incantations hark back to ancient Satanic mysteries. Someone described this set as a little too "Hammer House of Horror", which is a good point, as it delimits the evil, packaging it in a pigeonhole. For Britten, I suspect the horror was far more personal than it was for Henry James. If anything, the evil in the Turn of the Screw comes out in things as modern as Omen and Rosemary's Baby. Or in real-life cases of madness and cruelty. In comparison, McVicar's Turn of the Screw is as safe as any TV drama.

Because Charles Mackerras is almost 84, and has long been a stalwart at the ENO, it is de rigueur to praise him. Nonetheless, the Turn of the Screw is fundamentally chamber music, where 14 musicians replicate the drama in the pit. Conducting this opera isn't like conducting Wagnerian forces. It's more the art of letting the individual soloists shine. In this performance, shine they did - extremely evocative, luminous playing from each person at the right time. If only such standards held in the production.

The Turn of the Screw pivots on paradox, and one of the great joys of going to the opera - any opera - is the paradox of learning how much you have yet to know, even about things you think you know extremely well. This is a wonderful opera and will always be worth hearing, but I came out of this revival wishing I hadn't known how much more it could have been.

The picture is Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "When they met themslves", a good metaphor for whatever might be going on in the Turn of the Screw.