Name: The Turn of the Screw
Start: 2011-08-11T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2011-08-28T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Opera House

Organization

Glyndebourne Festival

Tenor

Toby Spence

Prologue

Peter Quint

Soprano

Kate Royal

Governess

Susan Bickley

Mrs. Grose

Giselle Allen

Miss Jessel

Conductor

Jakub Hrůša

Stage director

Jonathan Kent

Set designer

Paul Brown

Costume designer

Lighting designer

Mark Henderson

Joanna Songi

Flora

Child vocalist

Miles

Orchestra

London Philharmonic Orchestra

English

The Turn of the Screw

Glyndebourne

United Kingdom

Opera House

Ebert Room

Lewes

Experience the 2011 Glyndebourne Festival production of Benjamin Britten’s two-act opera The Turn of the Screw, whose libretto by Myfanwy Piper is based on the book by Henry James.

The plot of The Turn of the Screw truly is as described in the opera’s Prologue a “curious story”. An isolated manor in the English countryside, a faithful old chambermaid, two young orphans and a new governess filled with enthusiasm, sent from London to take care of them. But nothing is as it seems in the protected world of Bly...

Directed by Jakub Hrůša, Musical Director of Glyndebourne on Tour, Jonathan Kent’s strangely disturbing production was filmed at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2011. The staging updates Henry James’ late-Victorian ghost story to the postwar England in which Britten composed the opera, a choice that, as put by Martin Kettle in The Gaurdian “is very effective, underlining that Britten, not James is the evening’s presiding spook”. With the score realized by an assured cast of soloists, supported by the London Philharmonic under Edward Gardner, the production serves up a shiver-inducing evening of insidious musical mystery.

Production booklet

Further reading