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The following article by Leo Phillips appeared in ‘Opera East’ magazine, Fall 2003.

The Turn of the Screw (Benjamin Britten)

Throughout an often exciting career as a violinist and, more recently, as a conductor, I have always, upon commencing the study of a piece of music new to me, tried to discover the one most special moment or phrase that would unlock the whole work’s magic in my mind, my imagination and in my heart.

Often that moment would be elusive; sometimes I would not feel that I had truly located it until the performance date was worryingly imminent, but fortunately I would usually get there in the end.

It was therefore immensely gratifying that, during my very first reading of the score of Benjamin Britten’s opera The Turn of the Screw, I knew instinctively and immediately the precise scene – taking place approximately halfway through Act 2 - that would open up the entire work for me.

The newly appointed Governess, tormented by the terrible presence of the ghosts of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel in the house of her charges, Flora and Miles, is panicked into deciding that she cannot stay at the poisoned house any longer. While the children are at church with the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, she rushes to her room in order to pack and flee, only to find the ghostly Miss Jessel sitting at her desk.

Miss Jessel ‘fiercely imparts of her woe’, and she also reveals that she will be forever returning, coming closer each time, seeking revenge. The Governess now feels that she is unable to abandon the children and so, in direct contravention of the one condition her employer had imposed upon her, she writes a letter to him requesting a meeting. It is a letter that Quint, in the opera’s creepiest sequence (and there are quite a few scenes contending for that honour), will incite Miles to steal.

The whole passage is amazingly dramatic, both in the libretto and in the music itself, but the sheer beauty of the moment when the governess reads her simple letter out, to the accompaniment of warmly played strings and a ravishing harp solo, still brings a quiet dampness to my eyes. ‘Forgive me’, she pleads, ‘Forgive me, that is all.’

One’s sympathies fly out to her at this point in the tale, but we are of course never really sure if the ghosts actually exist, or if - casting the governess in a completely different light - they are but demented figments of a neurotic, lurid and psychopathic imagination.

Britten, and his librettist, Myfanwy Piper, brilliantly recreate the unearthly ambiguity of Henry James’ novel, and it is surely partly this, and the almost enforced involvement of the audience’s intellects and emotions, that has made The Turn of The Screw one of the twentieth century’s enduring masterpieces.

While I have seen most of Britten’s operas staged, I have actually performed comparatively little of his music in my career to date. I have always enjoyed his compositions; most are very approachable, such as his settings of Rimbaud in the song cycle ‘Les Illuminations’, and his superbly exciting tribute to his teacher in ‘Variations on a theme of Frank Bridge’, both works that moved me deeply when I first heard them as a child.

Probably the first composition of his that I heard – perhaps the one that most people hear first - was ‘A Young Person’s Guide to The Orchestra’, an engaging romp through all the diverse tones and textures that one can discover emanating from within the large body of musicians that collectively make up the single musical instrument that is called an orchestra. I also took part, as an enthusiastic ten-year-old member of the choir at Dulwich College (in London, not Phuket!), in a performance of his cantata ‘St. Nicholas’.

Britten has remained an influential figure in musical education, particularly in England. At a time when very little music was being specifically composed for children, he wrote pieces - skilfully and prolifically - not only for children to listen to but also, more importantly, in which they could participate as players and singers.

Nowadays, Britten’s obvious empathy and love for the young, his nurturing interest in their musical lives, and the close relationships he seemed often to develop - particularly with musically gifted boys - would likely be seen as sinister examples of ‘predatory grooming’. Had the same attitudes been as prevalent in his lifetime, subsequent generations would almost certainly have been denied a substantial amount of significant and quite beautiful music.

Re-reading Humphrey Carpenter’s excellent 1992 biography, there can be no doubt about Britten’s feelings towards the young boys to whom he became close, including several of those that appeared in his opera productions. Surely, however, in The Turn of the Screw, as well as in his later opera based upon Thomas Mann’s novel ‘Death in Venice’, and earlier in ‘Peter Grimes’ and ‘Billy Budd’, he is to some extent examining, not uncritically, this area of his personal make-up. Indeed Britten himself wrote to the critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor, two months after the premiere of The Turn of the Screw: ‘I think in many ways you are right about the subject being, as it were, nearest to me of any I have yet chosen, (although what that indicates of my own character I shouldn’t like to say!).’

The score comes across as intensely personal and intimate. Using just thirteen instrumentalists (who, it must be said, between them manage to play 29 instruments) Britten creates a hugely versatile ensemble, capable not only of a sort of whispered creepiness, but also of screeching terror, triumphant grandeur and all things in between. His intricately interrelated tempo markings, his phrasings, and his dynamics are, as usual, meticulously inscribed.

Britten’s fastidiousness is celebrated in a famous story told about a performance in Coventry Cathedral of his Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (a work that constitutes another amazing musical experience). The last horn call is made from an offstage area, the horn soloist having discreetly exited while the tenor is still singing. In the dress rehearsal Britten, ever the perfectionist, spent an age finding the exact degree to which the door to the sacristy should be left ajar in order that Dennis Brain’s eerie horn mastery would achieve the desired effect. The correct angle was marked on the floor, and strictly adhered to in the evening’s performance. Unfortunately a well-meaning audience member, thinking that the insensitive horn player - having walked off the stage for whatever reason - was now merely practising for his next concert, rose abruptly from her seat and quietly shut the door upon this impertinent and unwarranted interruption of the concert’s main work.

I have found that, with any possible interpretation already proscribed to such an extent by the composer, the conductor’s role is perhaps a less personal one than in the interpretation of works by other great composers. That is not to say that the conductor does not have a lot to do - I can assure you he does (!) - but questions of style and basic understanding arise to a much lesser extent.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is to realise the grand musical arc that Britten has created. Piper’s magnificent libretto, incorporating children’s nursery rhymes, schoolboys’ Latin grammar exercises, and the memorable line taken from a poem by W.B. Yeats, ‘The ceremony of innocence is drowned’, faithfully follows the original storyline of the novel. Since, however, this is a staged work and not a book, much description has been replaced by a couple of ‘invented’ scenes, necessary to make the action clear.

Already in the prologue to the opera Britten introduces the rising fourth motif that will dominate the entire piece and, directly afterwards, begins the opera proper by announcing ‘The Screw Theme’ which will reoccur in each scene and orchestral variation, reiterated in new and ingenious ways; as birdsong on the flute, for example, or hinted at in the sound of church bells and in Miles’ piano practise. The various tonalities, and the structure of the keys through which the music passes are also pointedly descriptive of the characters involved at those specific junctures.

The vocal lines, too, exhibit astounding variety and imagination. As long as the prologue is, as traditional, delivered by the same singer as will go on to sing the role of Quint, the opera contains only one adult male voice. The careful balancing of four sopranos and a treble can have been no easy task; it is remarkably achieved in a manner that allows the protagonists to remain for the most part as individuals but, when necessary, to combine to make ‘teams’ (Governess/Mrs. Grose, The Children, The Ghosts); and when, at the end of Act 1, in a loud and somewhat populous climax, they all unite and sing to – or at – each other (and of course you, the audience), their coalescence is genuinely frightening.

The Turn of The Screw is a fantastic, fascinating and powerful work, with an ability to affect on many different levels. As a chamber opera, it is ideally suited to the small hall at the Thai Cultural Centre, and I personally hope that our production will become another real turning point for opera and classical music here in Bangkok.

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