Tenor Edmundas Seilius sings the Prologue to Britten's ghost opera The Turn of the Screw (with pianist Joyce Fieldsend) in what we're told is the dress rehearsal at the Opéra National du Rhin. I don't suppose any director's going to let the Narrator just stand in front of the curtain and tell what he has to tell about this "curious story," but this performance at least starts surprisingly...
Swedish soprano whose perceptive singing and vivid acting made her a great heroine in operas by Tchaikovsky, Richard Strauss and Janacek One of the most perceptive and admired sopranos of the postwar era, Elisabeth Söderström, who has died aged 82, had a lengthy career that carried on into the 1990s, when she was well into her 60s. In everything she attempted, her vibrantly beautiful singing...
THE HABIT OF ART Lyttleton Theatre 09.11.09 spoiler alert - this preview review contains quotations and plot detail ! Well, it couldn't have been written by anyone else. The perennial themes – the insecure outsider, literature, young boys. The trademark recycling - “I saw a bishop with a moustache the other day”: Forty Years On, forty years on – the caller misunderstood: Habeas...
To see the revival of David McVicar’s fabulous ‘Turn of the Screw’ (left) is to be reminded just how good English National Opera can be when it sticks to its metier: getting brilliant directors to give tried and trusted classics a new and original twist, with singers who understand how to work as an ensemble. While 84-year-old Charles Mackerras cast a lovely spell from the pit, the...
Lord Britten would surely have forgiven Sir Charles all his past innuendoes and applauded his magnificent return to the fold if he could have seen the nearly-84-year old tearing into his most concentrated masterpiece, The Turn of the Screw , in the Coliseum revival of David McVicar's English National/Mariinsky Opera production. It prompted me to look back at what Mackerras had to say about his chequered...
THE TURN OF THE SCREW ENO at the Coliseum 30.10.09 This acclaimed McVicar production of 2007, revived for just six performances, boasts three of the original singers, and a new conductor, the legendary Charles Mackerras, who worked with Britten on the original production, sharing the conducting with the composer in 1954 when the opera arrived in London after the Venice première. The capacity...
The "soft, thick light" described in Old Suffolk, Henry James's memoir of his 1879 journey to Aldeburgh and seeing the submerged skyline of medieval Dunwich, hung low over Snape last weekend.
HALLOWE'EN is an apt season for Britten's creepy masterpieceThe Turn Of The Screw, based on the Henry James ghost story. David McVicar's revived 2007 staging takes the opera back to the Victorian era of shadowy houses and costumes of black bombazine. Tanya McCallin's set of sliding translucent screens and furniture under dust-covers conjures up a sinister household of repressed secrets.
Each time I see Britten’s The Turn of the Screw I am more impressed by the brilliance of the music, and more irritated by the unprofitable ambiguities of the drama. The first revival at the Coliseum of David McVicar’s stunningly brilliant 2008 production of the piece intensified both these feelings. The overwhelming source of satisfaction was the staggering conducting of Sir Charles Mackerras....
In what turned out to be a very special performance, Sir Charles Mackerras returned to English National Opera to conduct the first revival of David McVicar’s production of Britten’s Henry James' chiller (first seen at the Mariinsky Theatr...
Hallowe'en is about to arrive early in the opera world: next week English National Opera opens its revival of Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw, a taut and terrifying masterpiece based on Henry James's enigmatic ghost story.
Before we headed out to Aida last night, I realized that I was going to be adding a new opera to my “list” of works I’ve seen. I’d never actually written them all down, though, so this morning I’ve been going through my memory (and opera company archive websites), and I think I’ve come up with most of them: 67! Not bad, I think. Do any of you do this? Maury ? JSU...
Outside of Benjamin Britten's opera, the best-received adaptation of 'The Turn of the Screw' in any medium is Jack Clayton's 1961 film 'The Innocents' , with Deborah Kerr as Miss Gibbens, the parson's daughter turned governess. Michael Redgrave adds a touch of first-reel sparkle as the too-busy-being-a-bachelor-to-deal-with-kids uncle to Flora (Pamela Franklin) and Miles (Martin Stephens). Meg Jenkins...
By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 11 December 2007] It's hard to remember a closer crop of Britten operas in London. The past week has seen Glyndebourne’s touring Albert Herring , English National Opera’s The Turn of the Screw and concerts of Owen Wingrave and Billy Budd . All this is testimony to Britten's enduring appeal, but the reasons for it are insufficiently appreciated. Yes, he...
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