The Turn of the Screw, Glyndebourne Tour, review: 'cinematic'

A blustery autumn evening at Glyndebourne is as good a backdrop as any for The Turn of the Screw, Britten’s chamber opera based on the Henry James ghost story. But just to underline the appropriateness of this setting, the Prologue in Jonathan Kent’s staging incorporates grainy film footage showing the children Miles and Flora at play in the Glyndebourne garden. Had Britten not fallen out with Glyndebourne as comprehensively as he did, The Turn of the Screw would indeed probably have been premiered there, like The Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring before it, instead of in Venice.

Revived now by Francesca Gilpin, Kent’s 2006 production is no stranger to the Glyndebourne stage, but it still makes a fresh impact, not least for the way in which the contemporary-set Prologue (sung by Anthony Gregory in a classic, clear English tenor) features the unpacking of an old trunk. The rest is set at the time of composition, in the mid-Fifties, and even if this is not the most physically claustrophobic production, there is little room for the ambiguity that admirers of Britten’s creepiest opera – now, that is saying something – like to claim for the piece. As Craig Raine has argued about the novella, Victorian readers would have easily recognised the ghosts as child abusers, so why do 21st-century opera audiences remain coy on the subject?

Paul Brown’s airy set – allowing the 16 scenes to flow cinematically – is designed to accommodate shadows. The grey-white light that fills it casts a ghostly pallor over everything, including the large window-piece that is laid on the floor for the lake in which Miss Jessel (incisively sung by Miranda Keys) is first glimpsed.

Anne Mason gives a strong performance as the repressed Mrs Grose, and Natalya Romaniw’s wide-eyed Governess is convincing in her emotional journey from eager newcomer to one of Miles’s destructive “possessors”, even if the top of her voice is a little colourless. Both the children are confidently musical and excellent actors: Thomas Delgado-Little brings an angelic treble but troubling ambiguity to Miles, and Louise Moseley is an appropriately young Flora.

There is always a danger that this tautly written work, in which the composer plays his every stylistic trick, can sound like the soundtrack to the picnic of some peculiarly Anglican demons. Here the conductor Leo McFall steers it in a more universal direction, showing a complete grasp of the score’s structure while finding desolate lyricism amid Britten’s carefully calculated instrumental colours.

Until November 28, on tour to Woking, Canterbury, Norwich, Milton Keynes and Plymouth. Tickets available at glyndebourne.com