OAKLAND, Calif. — When Benjamin Britten’s operatic treatment of Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw premiered at Venice’s La Fenice opera house on Sept. 14, 1954, Time Magazine reported that “the Italians seemed fairly baffled by the refined music and the obscure Jamesian plot.” The same cannot be said of the audience for West Edge Opera’s performance Aug. 9 at the Scottish Rite Center in downtown Oakland. Thanks to Mark Streshinsky’s multi-layered, insightful production and an excellent cast, the meaning of Britten’s work came through with incisive clarity — even if part of that clarity is understanding the ambiguity at the root of James’ tale.
Like many fairy tales and operas (e.g. Bluebeard, “Don’t look behind the locked door,” Lohengrin, “Don’t ask my name or origin,” Orfeo, “Don’t look back”), The Turn of the Screw has a prohibition at its core. The Governess, employed to care for two orphaned children at a country estate by their guardian uncle in the city, must never trouble him. In the words of Myfanwy Piper’s libretto, “She was to do everything, be responsible for everything, not to worry him at all, no, not to write, but to be silent…” Although daunted by the task, she accepts because of her attraction to her new employer: “She was full of doubts. But she was carried away: that he, so gallant and handsome… should need her help.”
The Governess’ attraction to her unnamed employer sets in motion a plot driven by her perception that her wards, Miles (treble/boy soprano) and his younger sister, Flora (soprano), are in league with the ghosts of their deceased former caretakers: the previous governess, Miss Jessel (soprano), and the master’s valet, Peter Quint (tenor), portrayed in this production, as in the 1954 premiere, by the same singer who performs the Prologue. The small ensemble is filled out by the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (soprano). Low voices are noticeably absent, making Britten’s characters untethered.
The events of the opera can be seen as motivated by sexual attraction, abuse, guilt, and trauma. James’ 1898 novella already contains these psycho-sexual layers, and Streshinsky leans into them. Early on a letter arrives informing the Governess that Miles has been expelled from school as “an injury to his friends” — in the context of English “public” school, a clear reference to homosexual behavior. This is the first event that leads the Governess to question her perception of Miles’ innocence. Later, Mrs. Grose, powerfully sung by Erin Neff, informs the Governess that Quint was “free” with Miles and Miss Jessel, who, forced to leave the estate because of pregnancy, committed suicide.
These are the “facts” of the opera’s plot to which Streshinsky adds video projections in dialogue with the stage action. At the news of Miles’ “injury to his friends,” we see a video of him cowering under a sink in a lavatory being pelted with paper towels. The message seems to be that the events at school have traumatized him. Similarly, when Mrs. Grose reports on Miss Jessel’s fate, we see the former governess celebrating her pregnancy with the children and a heart-wrenching scene of her being rejected by Quint after disclosing the pregnancy to him. Streshinsky also humanizes Quint with a video of him reacting with horror at Jessel’s death.
The children, we are led to understand, had at least partially fulfilling relationships with their previous caregivers. Quint’s and Jessel’s deaths must have left a void. All the more traumatic and confusing for Miles is that his trust in Quint, it is strongly implied, was betrayed by sexual abuse. Their relationship comes with its own classic abuser’s prohibition: “Don’t tell.”
At the heart of James’ novella is the question of whether the ghosts are real or figments of the Governess’ imagination. By giving them singing roles (they never speak in the novella), Britten and Piper substantiate them to some degree, but Streshinsky wisely keeps the question open. The ghosts sing in a booth hidden above the audience stage left, with their images projected onto the same scrim as the videos. Though offstage, their voices lose none of their acoustic immediacy, but whether they are physically present or are merely projections of the Governess’s fantasy remains ambiguous.
Ambiguity is also present in the double-casting of Quint and singer of the Prologue, who, in a suggestive pantomime with the Governess when her terms of employment are being described, seems also to represent the children’s guardian. A charming, if obvious, directorial touch is having Miles curtsy and Flora bow when they are introduced to the Governess in a gender-bending distortion of Mrs. Grose’s instructions. Mrs. Grose’s mouth-on-mouth kissing of the Governess, however, smacks of directorial overreach.
The nightmare lurking behind seeming innocence pervades the plot and score. Scene 4, “The Tower,” begins as a glorious pastoral replete with woodwind solos accompanying the Governess’ traversal of the manor’s grounds. The music turns eerie and sinister when she spies a figure in the tower: She hopes it is her employer, but he is later identified as Quint. Likewise, the children’s tuneful nursery rhymes take queer turns, and Miles’ piano playing, which begins in a Mozartian vein, veers into demonic spheres of preternatural modernist virtuosity.
The star of the opera is soprano Laura Bohn, whose Governess dominates the stage when she is singing; in this production, she is always present, even when not called for in the score. Costume designer Sarah Nietfeld dresses her in the prim wool skirt and crisp white blouse of a 1950s schoolmarm. This fits her character as written, but clashes, not always productively, when Streshinsky has her engage in a wide range of behaviors — from orgasmic to avian — during other characters’ scenes. Vocally secure throughout, Bohn’s voice blossomed magnificently in the second act.
Tenor Alex Boyer was vocally thrilling as Quint and the singer of the Prelude. His voice easily filled the high-ceilinged theater, and he effortlessly tossed off Quint’s seductive roulades. Soprano Aléxa Sessler as Miss Jessel occasionally struggled to project in her lower register but sent tingles down my spine when paired with Boyer in declaiming the opera’s most famous line: “The ceremony of innocence is drowned,” drawn from Yeats’ 1919 poem “The Second Coming.” Erin Neff, outfitted in a gray wool suit, was the perfect embodiment of the faithful housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, her vocal prowess no less compelling than Boyer’s or Bohn’s.
Finding children to sing the demanding roles of Miles and Flora is always a challenge. (For the premiere, Britten was unable to find a suitable girl for Flora and settled, as have many productions since, on a woman for the role.) West Edge double-cast the children, and I heard the real-life siblings James and Siena Coniglio in the roles. Both did admirably, the fragility of their voices and “white” tone honing their poignant vulnerability.
Britten’s score for 13 solo players (string quintet, woodwind quintet, piano, harp, and percussion) is one of his most demanding and intricate. West Edge’s music director, Jonathan Khuner, led a taut, dramatic performance. All members of the ensemble deserve individual shout-outs for stellar contributions, but notably Adrienne Burg, whose English horn solos wove a beautiful counterpoint to Miles’ singing in the second act.
Yuki Izumihara’s set design and projections, artfully enlivened by props, effectively transported us to the world of the English manor. The heavy reliance on scrim and projection echoed the plot’s porous relationship between reality and fantasy.
West Edge Opera, which in recent years has settled on a summer-festival format, is a gem of the Bay Area’s operatic culture. Now sharing many of its singers and artistic staff with major opera companies, its artistic achievements, already well known to a robust cadre of local opera aficionados, deserve even wider recognition.
