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Britten’s Creepy “Screw” Wonderfully Turned

Robert Levine

Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, N.Y.; February 26, 2013—Benjamin Britten’s 1954 The Turn of the Screw is a masterpiece on the level of Henry James’ 1898 novella of the same name. A “ghost story” of an odd sort—James preferred, as he put it, “the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy” to “slashers”—the novella turns on its ambiguity and its creepiness. Are the ghosts real? Or is the Governess insane, repressed, paranoid, and the eventual cause of Miles’ death by heart failure? In the opera, of course, the “ghosts” sing, so we hear their reality, but Britten (and librettist Myfanwy Piper) sticks very close to James insofar as the puzzle is concerned. Do the children see and hear the ghosts? We simply don’t know—and of course, that’s what James and Britten wanted.

If the New York City Opera’s new production—sadly, available only for a very short run—has any problem at all, it is that director Sam Buntrock has Miles address the ghost of his (possible) tormentor/molester Peter Quint directly in the opera’s closing moments, thereby offering a point of view that James did not wish to make specific. Otherwise—and I’m certain that I’m the only person who will mind what I see as a transgression (James was an obsession of mine at university)—this is a remarkable production, one that captures the unexplained within the mundane, the claustrophobia, the creepiness. Buntrock has updated the opera from the late Victorian to approximately the 1970s or ‘80s—a console model TV is stage center; dress is modern without being punk, hip, or too contemporary. The TV shows static—à la the film Poltergeist—when the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessel are, assumedly, taking over. There are close to 30 orange-colored bare light bulbs hanging from the top of the stage that flicker and change brightness subtly and often—very disconcerting—and a window pane, glassless and occasionally crooked, helps skew the audience’s vista even further.

Musically, it’s ideal. Sara Jakubiak, youngish and pretty and blond, makes light of the Governess’ music, singing with big, pure sound and refusing to overact—her craziness is well-internalized. Treble Benjamin P. Wenzelberg sings impeccably on pitch as the possibly-possessed Miles and acts naturally. Buntrock has solved the problem of Flora, the least developed character, also possibly possessed, by making her somewhat mentally disabled: either she has hints of autism or is otherwise challenged, and adult soprano Lauren Worsham, as at home in musical theater as in opera, does a fine job. Dominic Armstrong as the Prologue and Peter Quint has a larger tenor voice than we are accustomed to in this music, and he’s splendid. Jennifer Goode Cooper, looking properly dead, sings a fine Miss Jessel, and Sharmay Musacchio makes the most of the oblivious Mrs Grose. Kudos to all the singers for their superb diction, making the surtitles practically unnecessary. Jayce Ogren leads the 14 players in Britten’s superbly scored combination of instruments with tension and clarity, the sound only occasionally swallowed in the cavernous Howard Gilman Opera House. An absolute triumph.

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