Britten: The Turn of the Screw Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.5

Britten: The Turn of the Screw Blu-ray Movie Review

Ghost Story: The Opera.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 12, 2013

The Turn of the Screw holds a special place in my heart in terms of its impact on my own history as a composer, for the very first commission I received was when I was a young student and a local theater company was producing The Innocents, the William Archibald play that is based upon Henry James’ disturbing novel. I can’t recall any more how the producers found out about me, but they asked me to write the source music that needed to be performed during the play. I recall there was a violin tune that one of the children needed to “mime” (we prerecorded all of the music which was then loaded into the soundboard to be cued during performance), and I also recall writing a main theme in C minor that I have the sneaking suspicion I probably plagiarized, at least in part, from any number of great mystery film scores that were no doubt embedded deeply in my subconscious. To turn a famous phrase on its head, and move from the ridiculous (me) to the sublime (Benjamin Britten), though I wasn't aware of it in my young student days, The Turn of the Screw provided inspiration for a rather interesting opera by one of England's most redoubtable composers. In fact there may be a through line from that opera, composed by the iconic Benjamin Britten to a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, and the William Archibald play, for Britten’s version highlights a quote from the famous William Butler Yeats poem The Second Coming, namely, “The ceremony of innocence is drowned.” Of course there’s a certain irony to “innocent” or “innocence” being bandied about with regard to the children at the center of The Turn of the Screw, for it was James’ great contribution to the novelistic art that the reader is never quite sure what exactly has happened in this tale of tragedy and death. Are these children in fact pure as the driven snow, dealing with a disturbed governess who is quickly becoming mentally unbalanced? Or are the children themselves possessed by a malevolent spirit that is leading them to drive the governess crazy?

The Turn of the Screw might have seemed like a fairly traditional ghost story when readers first came to it all those years ago, but there was a built in dialectic in the novel’s very structure, told from the point of view of an obviously disturbed governess who has been hired to care for two children at an isolated manor house. In both The Innocents and the operatic Turn of the Screw, certain decisions needed to be made vis a vis the apparitions themselves, which in the novel may in fact be actual spectral entities or merely the delusions of an addled mind. Britten and his librettist give the ghosts full body and full voice in their interpretation, and if that perhaps appears to deprive the story of at least a little of its inherent ambiguity, upon further reflection, it actually may not: if the ghosts are real, then why not make them completely corporeal? And on the other hand, if they’re merely the hallucinations of the increasingly deranged governess, again—why not make them completely corporeal?

Britten and Piper do introduce ambiguity in a couple of rather ingenious ways. First of all, they present the main Turn of the Screw story within a framing device whereby a character known as Prologue (Toby Spence) recounts the story of a governess (Miah Persson) he once knew, reading from her supposed memoirs. So right away, even though we are ostensibly “seeing” the governess’ memories, are we really? On a more subliminal level, Britten drifts back and forth between fairly straightforward diatonic material and some of his most forthright explorations into twelve tone serial technique. It’s an often startling juxtaposition, and it is a suitable aural analog for an unbalanced psyche.

This Glyndebourne production remounts director Jonathan Kent’s acclaimed version which was originally premiered in 2006. Jones has set the opera not in the gothic world of the nineteenth century but instead in the kind of bleak post- war era of Britain, when mid-century modern was just beginning to supplant the shortages caused by World War II. So instead of a labyrinthine mansion that could quite easily be haunted, we instead find ourselves in a surprisingly open expanse, one elevated by the extremely expressive set design of Paul Brown. In fact this production is extremely cinematic—as the Prologue begins to sing about the children, we see home movies playing in the background, and later when the Governess is on her way to Bly House, she’s in a train, with a rapidly passing background whizzing by the train windows. The stage revolves regularly throughout the production, lending an easy fluidity to segues between scenes.

This is an intensely intimate piece, arguably the best opera in Britten’s rather legendary career. Kent has upped the sexual angle rather provocatively in several key scenes scattered throughout the proceedings, but he hews very closely to Piper’s text, never introducing any unneeded or superfluous elements. The cast here is superb, including Persson, whom some might not immediately think of when casting a dowdy, troubled character like the Governess. Also outstanding is the boy soprano Thomas Parfitt, who makes Miles both troubled and troubling. Toby Spence also returns as Quint, the hulking “ghost” (or is he?), with a full bodied performance that is both spooky and strangely erotic.

Britten’s score is given an astoundingly visceral performance by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Jakub Hrusa. Britten’s music can transition from elegant, almost Vaughan Williams-esque sonorities to sudden bristling dissonances in a heartbeat, and the conducting and playing energizes these changes with an almost sensuous allure. This is a superb production of a fascinating opera and is certainly one of the most exciting Glyndebourne offerings in recent memory.

Britten: The Turn of the Screw Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Turn of the Screw is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Fra Musica and Harmonia Mundi with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. The production here is rather spare, but it's far from bland. Several uses of projections lend an interesting air to the proceedings, and the set design, while minimal, ably creates the spooky, uncertain atmosphere which is so important to the mood of the piece. The image of this high definition presentation is excellently sharp and well defined, with extremely good contrast and solid shadow detail. Fine detail is exceptional in close-ups and colors are all accurate looking and nicely saturated.

Britten: The Turn of the Screw Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Turn of the Screw features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix as well as an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 stereo fold down. Both of these tracks offer excellent fidelity, though the 5.1 does present the score with significantly more breathing room, especially important since Britten favors colors that sometimes exploit techniques like tone clusters and extremely close harmony. There's appealing balance between the singers and the orchestra, with no real problems other than perhaps a slight projection issue on occasion with the young Mr. Parfitt. The orchestra really sounds resplendent on the 5.1 track, with both the quasi-continuo (Britten uses solo piano for effect on occasion) and the tutti passages sounding equally rich and refined.

Britten: The Turn of the Screw Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Turn of the Screw – A Curious Story (1080i; 11:58) features director Jonathan Kent discussing his decision to set the opera in the fifties, while designer Paul Brown discusses what he wanted to bring to the table. There are some snippets from the dress rehearsal interspersed with interviews with some of the cast, but one of the most interesting things here is an archival recording of librettist Myfawny Piper.


• The Turn of the Screw – Behind the Drama (1080i; 9:48) features the two youths in the cast, Joanna Songi and Thomas Parfitt in addition to some of the people we've already met in the other featurette. There's really no reason in fact that this is a separate featurette, for it covers much the same territory.

Britten: The Turn of the Screw Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

In doing research for this review, I stumbled across an interesting factoid that gives me yet another reason to hold The Turn of the Screw close to my heart: it premiered on October 6, 1954. While that's not my birthyear, it is my birth date, so I'm just going to consider this ineffable work a prescient birthday present from Mr. Britten and Ms. Piper to yours truly. If that seems, well, as delusional as certain uptight governesses, even those not born on October 6 can consider this deeply moving and finely wrought production their own personal operatic gift for whatever occasion they feel like celebrating. This Blu-ray offers excellent video and audio and a couple of good supplements. Highly recommended.