Benjamin Britten’s opera, composed in 1954, is a gripping setting of the famous novella by Henry James of strange goings-on in a remote English manor house. There, a young governess has been employed to care for two children—Flora and Miles—but she quickly discovers that nothing is quite as it first seems. As she struggles to protect the children from increasingly sinister forces that seem to surround them, her sense of what is real and what is not becomes thrillingly blurred.
The Turn of the Screw stands as one of the most successful operas of the past hundred years. Its evocative music, scored for a chamber orchestra of 13 players, brilliantly captures the psychological tension and eerie ambiance of this classic gothic tale.
The cast includes some of Australia’s most accomplished operatic performers, including Elena Xanthoudakis, Lee Abrahmsen, and Robert Macfarlane.
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"This is part of a double bill – paired with another opera in English – The Old Maid and the Thief (a short satirical comedy by Gian Carlo Menotti) on 18 September at 7.30pm and 20 September at 1.30pm.
Each is a small operatic gem. Performed together the two works also reveal several shared dramatic interests, such as how love can drive us to do foolish things, and how our sense of reality is, well, not always what it seems….
For the complete experience, make sure you book into both operas.
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