The expression, ‘turn of the screw,’ originates in torture. A person’s thumb or finger was placed in a cylindrical metal device fitted with a sharp screw. The screw was turned until it drew blood. Each turn of the screw made things worse. In the opera, “Turn of the Screw,” by Benjamin Britten, at Santa Fe Opera this summer, the turning refers to the building tension in a ghost story—based on the Henry James novella with the same name from 1898.
“Turn of the Screw,” the novella, as the poet, Brad Leithauser wrote, is “a modest monument to the bold pursuit of ambiguity.” The reader is left wondering if all the horror actually happened, or was it all happening in the weakening mind of the main character? The ghosts in the James novella are seen by other characters and described, but never speak.
Britten’s telling of this story, in his 1954 opera, with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, faced a primary challenge.The ghosts needed to sing. But what to say? Piper’s brilliant choice was to have the dead characters speak in a sort of poetic ambiguity—a nod to the children of the household—the object of their haunting—and their way of seeing the world through their school lessons, nursery rhymes and hymns. There is still a lack of clarity about what actually happened before the former governess, Miss Jessel, and the sexually aggressive valet, Mr. Quint, died. But evil clearly lurks. And for the new governess, a young inexperienced thing, the screw turns throughout the opera, incited by the brilliant, creepy music by Britten.
Louisa Muller, the director of the Santa Fe production, (which was a Canadian Opera Company production originated at Garsington Opera, in Britain) also faced a challenge—how to handle the horror. Muller’s direction could have gone heavy-handed, a trip to Gothic-land, with regular rather than sporadic ghost sightings, and the evil, sexual abuse, and suicide plot lines accomplished through performers wearing fright make-up and acting like zombies. Her route, which was more effective, had the orphaned children as passive participants in the proceedings. Even though the two young siblings clearly had relationships with the ghosts, their “deadpan” reactions to the former people in their lives was both curious and effective. The young children, Flora and Miles, played by the excellent Annie Blitz and Everett Baumgarten, let the mundane, schoolroom routines with their new governess reek with innocence.
Even the ghosts are allowed to be subtle. They lurk rather than lurch. They are lingering spirits rather than arm-waving, larger-than-death opera people. In what was left out, Muller mirrored James’ approach. The opera is scarier because of it.
Britten’s score for a 13-piece chamber orchestra, energetically conducted by Gemma New, begins with the piano, alone, an odd choice to open an opera. Or is it? The piano offers strikingly simple, dark rumblings of sound. Low woodwinds, the harp, and a celestina each operate as soloists, personalities, they correspond to various characters in the opera, and to its overall tension. With none of the trappings of Italian Grand Opera—a huge chorus, love duets, or even particularly dramatic orchestral moments, things are left to build in a very 20th-Century musical style. Hintings of atonality weave into Britten’s melodies to create a sound tapestry that is relevant to its times, to James’ day, and also to ours.
Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, is the “simple” character in the story, the only one unable (for most of the evening) to see what’s going on. Jennifer Johnson Cano, who sang the role, offers vocal command and a working matter-of-factness at the same time, the closest thing to a comic performance of the evening. Jacquelyn Stucker, the new Governess, offers a portrayal of a woman who is, at first, delighted in her luck to land a plum job, but soon grows to seem lovelorn and confused. Her madness grows out of these pre-existing personality characteristics and not just as circumstances imposed on her—a complex job which requires an actor’s calibration, and which Stucker successfully achieved. Vocally, her soprano lines were more strident than lyrical, although one could imagine this voice in another opera sounding completely different.
As the only (adult) man in the cast, Brenton Ryan was effective as Mr. Quint as well as the anonymous singer who delivers the prologue that sets the story in flight. His voice floated around in Britten’s sing-songy lines, able to suggest ominousness through fluid passages of nontextual keening and melisma. That the role was written for the tenor voice, usually heroic, and not for a darker, lower baritone or bass, was possibly due to casting—Peter Pears, the composer’s partner in life, a well-known tenor, originated the part.
The music written for Miles, the young boy, however, epitomizes the brilliance of Britten’s opera. Britten was known to understand the limits and strengths of boy voices. Think of the importance of boys’ choirs in British culture and tradition. Of Britten’s sixteen operas and staged vocal works, twelve include singing roles for children. The writer Kevin Zekresky wrote, “The vocal demands placed on the singer performing Miles are as varied as they are immense. He must croon when being coy with his Governess, belt when playing games with Flora, produce a smooth bel canto when singing his “Malo” aria, and shout when responding to the ghost Quint in the opera’s finale.”
It was this voice, with Baumgarten clear and confident as Miles, which not only stood-out musically, but also most strongly illustrated the theme of the novel— children’s easy existence and fascination with both good and evil. For all its ghosts and a soprano going crazy, it is a children’s tale.
One watery image from the production continues to haunt me, thanks to the scenic design by Christopher Oram. (BTW, his use of the existing sound border of water at the Santa Fe Opera House, which always looked like an unused and possibly mold-filled dancing fountain show to me, was almost shockingly natural). But it was the lake that affected me. This body of water, enlarged for the second act, sat downstage left and offered the ghostly Miss Jessel opportunities to make water-bound entrances and exits. The sight of her Victorian hoop skirt, soaked at the bottom, dragging around the stage like a mop, was at once ethereal and earthy, somehow sexual and yet, in its slowness and weight, heartbreaking.
