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British
composer Benjamin
Britten faced a
challenge when he
took on the famous
story by Henry
James. “The
Turn of the
Screw” is a
ghost story based on
an ambiguity that
cannot be rendered
onstage. Are the
evil spirits of the
dead real and are
they trying to
pervert two innocent
children? Are they
visible to anybody
or is it all the
imagination of a
hysterical young
governess?
James uses several unreliable narrators and lets the young
governor tell in her own words what happened at the castle of
Bly. The much-debated story never reveals what is real, but
when Britten set the story to music in 1954, he created full
characters for the undead. We see Peter Quint and Miss Jessel as
clearly as the new Governess does, and only the old housekeeper
, Mrs. Grose, keeps her eyes wide shut almost to the end.
Still, Britten rendered the tug of war over the children’s souls
with extraordinary suspense. The captivating valet Peter Quint,
who “made free with everyone,” and the beautiful Governess
Miss Jessel (who could not resist him and shamefully died in
childbirth) have left their mark on ten year-old Miles and six
year-old Flora, but the new young Governess is determined to
break their spell and “save the children.”
Britten’s composition (for chamber orchestra with piano and
celesta) fleshes out the ghostly characters with inspired
additional lines and vocal laments that culminate in their
mysterious wailing, “The ceremony of innocence is drowned."
Innocence is in doubt and the staging by American director Luisa
Muller leaves sufficient ambiguity for the young Governess, a
vicar’s daughter, who has only a dim grasp of perversity and
corruption. The director delays the apparition of Peter Quint
until the sun behind the opera is setting and the tall, elegant
window-doors around the hall turn dark.
Between Quint’s appearances, his shadow wanders over the
almost empty hall. His washed-out mirage of a face hovers
outside, looking in, watching.
Night turns the window-doors into glittering, deceptive surfaces,
creepy and alluring (set design by Christopher Oram and light
design by Malcolm Rippeth). All the women, the Governess, Miss
Jessel and old Mrs. Grose, wear black crinoline dresses. Quint
stands out with his reddish hair and mustache; the children wear
lighter clothes, but there is almost no color onstage.
American soprano Jacqueline Stucker as the Governess has the
right mixture of charm, earnestness and determination in her
voice and acting to win the children over, especially her pupil
Miles. Young Everett Baumgarten (SFO debut) is a casting coup,
a boy with an astonishing vocal assurance and purity. Even
though he is the younger sibling here, he manages the perfect
tone of voice to convey fragility and precocious smarts. The
Governess reveals her own vulnerability and need for affection
only once when the little boy soothingly caresses her face and
she is overcome. What is the secret of the boy who was sent from
school because he was considered “an injury to others”? She
prefers not to investigate; she blindly adores him.
The director chose not to bring forth the erotic subtext of the
opera. She relies on the implicit in the libretto and the music.
The strong undercurrent of yearning in the composition,
conducted with passionate lyricism by Gemma New (New
Zealand, SFO debut) comes out when Miles is transported into
his touching and disturbing air, ”Malo Malo”:
Malo I would rather be
Malo in an apple tree
Malo than a naughty boy
Malo in adversity.
It is the high point of the opera and its dark allure casts a spell
on the Governess.
Young American soprano Annie Blitz (SFO debut) as Flora is just
as convincing and vocally secure. She has her big moment at the
lake – a small pool of water at the edge of the stage that she calls
“the Dead Sea.” She pretends to play with her doll but secretly
communicates with Miss Jessel who hovers in he reeds.
The director lets Flora drop her doll into the water to distract the
Governess, then pull it out slowly like a drowned corpse.
American tenor Brenton Ryan (who will sing Wagner’s Loge in
Salzburg, Berlin and Munich next) as Peter Quint has the ideal
mellifluous voice for the role, menacing, and seductive. As Miss
Jessel, Californian soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer’s more edgy
voice contrasts well with the soprano of the Governess. The
always slightly comical figure of Mrs. Grose is marvelously
portrayed by American mezzo Jennifer Johnson Cano with the
right amount of hysterical wailing and down-to-earth fussiness
in her acting. Both singing and acting are on a level I have rarely
witnessed in a fully staged version of the opera.
A crucial element of the story, however, is not addressed in this
production: the fact that the two children, who lost their parents
and then their seductive caretakers, could not possibly be
normal children. Miles and Flora appear to play-act normality,
i.e. innocence, which the governor detects, to her horror, when
she observes their “ceremonies” of dissimulation. In the only
existing opera film of Turn of the Screw by Peter Weigl, the
children are brilliant and devious. They clearly perform, but for
whom? Do they obey the ghosts or try to please the Governess
who expects them to be “innocent children”? While the written
story describes them as divinely beautiful, unnaturally
precocious and gentle, Muller lets them quibble and fight a lot,
perhaps to convey normalcy.
Instead of pointing to the erotic layers in the story, Muller finds
dramatic tension in the increasingly oppressive darkness of her
stage, in the magnificent choreography of light and shadow that
takes on a claustrophobic urgency.
The final confrontation between Quint and the Governess over
the soul of Miles leads to the tragic denouement. Against Quint’s
panicked warnings, Miles caves in to the Governess, to her
insistence that the maleficent ghost must be named in order to
dispel his power. “Peter Quinn, you devil!” Miles cries out,
collapses, and dies in her lap.
What follows is Britten's stunning allusion to what it means to be
possessed. Peter Quint has faded away with a long, chilling
lament, and now the Governess takes on the boy’s song “Malo
Malo.” The haunting melody accompanies her as she slowly rises
and leaves, her white face floating like a specter in the slow
blackout.
It's a powerful achievement for the director and everyone
involved. With a modern psychological interpretation, one could
conclude that James and Britten—both gay—touch upon the
unspeakable sexual and in particular homoerotic currents in
human beings of any age. The Turn of the Screw precedes
today’s awareness that revealing, speaking about sexual abuse is
often linked to a death threat that can break the victim. The long
silence of the audience -- before stormy applause -- gave an
indication that people took something personal and meaningful
from this astonishing night.
Photos: Curtis Brown for the Santa Fe Opera
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