Who are the ghosts who haunt two orphaned children and their governess in a country house? Our response to Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw (1954) always gravitates back to one question. The more you encounter this enigmatic chamber opera, the less the exact nature of the eerie dead couple, Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, matters. Based on Henry James’s novella of 1898, this is a work of fiction so anything can be true. Let them be ghosts. Britten, like James, was concerned with the immortality of the soul, and the stain of evil in our “green twilight” world (James’s phrase, not that of Britten’s librettist, Myfanwy Piper). Fantasy or truth, it leaves us uneasy.
An arresting new production by Isabelle Kettle for the Ustinov Studio, the intimate space behind Bath’s Theatre Royal, gave full rein to the work’s mysteries with the simple trick of placing Quint and Jessel behind a transparent curtain. Perhaps Kettle and her designer, Charlotte Henery, had read the work of James’s brother, William James. The pioneering psychologist spent years seeking empirical evidence for the existence of ghosts. Our waking mind, he argued, is separated from other kinds of consciousness by “the flimsiest of screens”.
With characters dressed in late Victorian costume, props minimal, Kettle’s staging used the limited space with ingenuity. The usual instrumental ensemble was replaced by two pianos, celesta and flutes, played by Henry Websdale (music director), Aleksandra Myslek and Carys Gittins. A goldfish bowl suggested the lake. A column, off-centre, provided focus. In the first of two casts, the children – Oliver Michael, 13, as Miles, and Maia Greaves, 14, as Flora (a role she sang at Garsington last year) – were exceptional. Each possessed the confident, watertight musicianship and acting skills needed for these challenging roles.
Anna Cavaliero’s sympathetic Governess, whose credible emotional security is rattled by events; Emma Bell’s warm, attractive Mrs Grose; Xavier Hetherington’s Quint and Elin Pritchard’s Miss Jessel completed a formidable cast, voices almost too powerful for the acoustic but compelling throughout. The absence of harp and other instruments in the original score, and the closeup nature of the performance robbed the opera of nuance and perspective, but this was no reflection on the uniform excellence of these singers and players. Under the artistic directorship of Deborah Warner, the Ustinov offers a radical programme of opera, dance and song: a venue on a high.
Supernatural elements – no ghosts but everything else – rampaged through Little Bulb’s enchanting Wolf Witch Giant Fairy, back at the Royal Opera House Linbury theatre after its Olivier award-winning triumph last year. Red Riding Hood (Clare Beresford) finds herself entangled in other nursery tales en route to her grandmother: a golden goose, a beanstalk, the witch Baba Yaga. In this collaborative family show all the theatrical effects, as well as singing, dancing, playing instruments, are achieved by the versatile cast of 10. Music is based on folk traditions, with echoes of klezmer, and fearless use of coloratura as required (specifically by the witch, Claire Wild). Sporting an enviable orange top hat, Peter Brathwaite held all together as a clear-voiced narrator. This is ideal Christmas fare for children over five.
If you are older, you can stay home and watch a film. Close readers may have detected my cool view of Tár, the Hollywood take on conductors that attracted headlines early in the year. In Todd Field’s film the musicians, like the artists in Iris Murdoch novels who rarely lift a paint brush, never seem to do any practice. Fortunately, 2023 has ended with two superior music-based movies. Bradley Cooper’s Maestro concentrates on the relationship between the composer-conductor-guru Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia, but manages to convey the febrile genius of a polymath who left his mark on 20th-century music.
Fanny: The Other Mendelssohn, has music at the heart not the margins. Directed and written by Sheila Hayman, this film examines the reputation of her great-great-great-grandmother, the composer Fanny Hensel (overlooked sister of the better known Felix Mendelssohn). Among many illuminating contributors is the pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason, playing Hensel’s “lost” Easter Sonata. A condensed chronicle emerges of gender, religion, social stereotyping, prejudice, sibling rivalry and the continuing imbalance in musical life today, all told through the vital evidence of pages of notes on a stave, written in brown-black ink – some of those pages missing. Detective work at its serious best, about the essence of being a composer.
Star ratings (out of five)
The Turn of the Screw ★★★★
Wolf Witch Giant Fairy ★★★★
The Turn of the Screw is at the Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath, until 22 December
Wolf Witch Giant Fairy is at the Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House, London, until 6 January
Maestro is on general release now and on Netflix from 20 December; Fanny: the Other Mendelssohn is in select cinemas and available to watch on Curzon Home Cinema
