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The main stage at the Royal Opera House allows ample space for bold, expansive productions (it doesn’t always get them). But if you’re looking for something more claustrophobic, more menacing, the smaller Linbury Theatre, deep beneath the main auditorium, is a better bet.
Claustrophobia and menace are plentiful in Benjamin Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw; based (not slavishly) on Henry James’s novella, it fits the Linbury perfectly. Musically, it’s a tour de force of concision. The orchestra has just 13 (uncredited) players, but the score is so tightly wound that the music never feels thin: harp and celesta, instruments that can be soothing, here sound ominous and eerie.
There are only six singing roles, although in this new staging, co-created by director Natalie Abrahami and set designer Michael Levine, there are two hyperactive extras, of which, more later. The opera’s plot follows James fairly closely: a Governess, sent to the country to look after two young children, Miles and Flora, is forbidden to communicate with their guardian; instead, she must deal with the housekeeper, Mrs Grose. Initially excited, the Governess soon senses two alien presences – the valet Peter Quint and the former Governess, Miss Jessel, both dead for some time. (Here, Jessel seems to be carrying Quint’s unborn child.)
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Are they ghosts or figments of the new Governess’s imagination? The staging allows both possibilities, while leaning heavily towards the latter. As seems almost compulsory in productions of this opera, Abrahami and Levine make liberal use of video projections (created by Duncan McLean). Sometimes the images add texture; at others they are more conventionally blurry, would-be dreamlike – although the sequence accompanying the Governess’s disturbed sleep clearly suggests that Quint and Jessel are products of her fever dream.
Of course, being in her nightmares doesn’t mean that they aren’t real ghosts. It’s one of the original touches of the production that they should also be stagehands, moving the props – beds, chairs, desks – around the set. In that, they’re each aided by a double, whose presence fits less well. A lake is central to the story, so for much of the opera the Linbury stage is flooded, creating another layer of hallucination as the singers splash their way through the action.
Conductor Bassem Akiki ensures that the music creates the requisite spectral atmosphere, and the cast add unexaggerated support. Elgan Llŷr Thomas, his voice ringingly intense, captures Quint’s unsettling blend of the suave and the predatory, while Kate Royal’s Jessel is both threatening and vulnerable. On opening night, Phoenix Matthews and Emilia Blossom Ostroumoff clearly enjoyed playing mischievous, but the centre of attention is Isabelle Peters’ Governess, straitlaced but fraying at the edges. It’s a commanding, unsettling performance.
Royal Opera House, to April 6; rbo.org.uk
