Opera · Opera in English

The Turn of the Screw

14 September 1954, Teatro La Fenice, Venice

Benjamin Britten · libretto by Myfanwy Piper, after Henry James

Britten's chamber opera sets Henry James's ghost story of a governess at a remote country house who becomes convinced that her two charges are in the power of two dead servants. Thirteen players, six singers and a prologue; the whole score grows from a single theme and fifteen variations, one between each scene, tightening as the story does.

How to spot them

▸Bly, a remote English country house in the mid-19th century; a governess forbidden ever to write to her employer
▸A chamber orchestra of thirteen players and a cast of six, with two children among them
▸A tenor Prologue who then reappears as the dead valet; the dead governess is a soprano
▸Two acts of eight scenes each, linked by orchestral variations on a theme built from all twelve notes
▸A boy who chants Latin declensions and sings a song on the word 'Malo'

Arias & moments — listen

A tenor steps out in evening dress to read from a faded manuscript before the story begins (1954)

The Prologue, sung by the same singer who later plays Peter Quint

"Malo, malo, I would rather be" — a boy sets a Latin grammar rhyme to a mournful tune (1954)

Miles's song; it returns at the very end as the governess is left holding his body

A ghost on the tower calls a boy's name in long melismas over celesta, harp and gong (1954)

Quint's nocturnal summons, 'Miles! Miles!' — one of the opera's most quoted textures

"Tom, Tom, the piper's son" and "Lavender's blue" turn sinister in the children's nursery (1954)

The Act 1 nursery-rhyme scene for Flora and Miles with the housekeeper

The two ghosts sing a duet quoting Yeats: "The ceremony of innocence is drowned" (1954)

Opening of Act 2, 'Colloquy and Soliloquy'; the line is from Yeats's 'The Second Coming'

"O Innocence, you have corrupted me" — a governess is left alone with a dead child in her arms (1954)

The final scene; the boy names his tormentor, then dies

Quick-fire facts

•The libretto is by Myfanwy Piper, wife of the designer John Piper; it was her first of three collaborations with Britten, followed by Owen Wingrave and Death in Venice.
•The source is Henry James's 1898 novella; the opera was commissioned for the 1954 Venice Biennale.
•Britten conducted the premiere at La Fenice, with Peter Pears as Prologue and Quint, Jennifer Vyvyan as the Governess and David Hemmings, aged twelve, as Miles.
•The theme uses all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, built from alternating rising fourths and falling thirds; the fifteen interludes are the 'turns of the screw', and the acts move up through the keys by fifths.
•The six characters are the Prologue, the Governess, Miles, Flora, Mrs Grose the housekeeper, Peter Quint and Miss Jessel.
•The orchestra is thirteen solo players, so a soloist's instrumental colour attaches to each character — celesta for Quint, for instance.
•James's story is famously ambiguous about whether the ghosts are real; in the opera they sing, which many critics argue settles the question.
•David Hemmings went on to star in Antonioni's Blow-Up; his voice broke during the opera's early run.

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Sources

Britten Pears Arts — The Turn of the Screw
Grove Music Online (Oxford Music Online) — Britten, Benjamin: The Turn of the Screw
Humphrey Carpenter — Benjamin Britten: A Biography