The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera, 16 October 2024

Coliseum

Images: © Manuel Harlan
Peter Quint (Robert Murray), Flora (Victoria Nekhaenko),
Miles (Jerry Louth), The Governess (Ailish Tynan)

Governess – Ailish Tynan
Flora – Victoria Nekhaenko
Mrs Grose – Gweneth Ann Rand
Miles – Jerry Louth
Miss Jessel – Eleanor Dennis
Peter Quint – Robert Murray
Prologue – Alan Oke

Director, designs – Isabella Bywater
Lighting – Paul Anderson
Projections – Jon Driscoll

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Duncan Ward (conductor)

It had been a while since I last saw The Turn of the Screw, though there was a time when it seemed quite a regular . To my mind the strongest of Britten’s operas, it was last seen at the Coliseum in an excellent staging by David McVicar: again to my mind, one of his strongest. It now returns in a new ENO production by Isabella Bywater, also designed by her, with an impressive cast conducted by Duncan Ward. 

Flora, Miles, Mrs Grose (Gweneth Ann Rand), Governess

Bywater’s production seems generally to have been well received. Whilst acknowledging her effort to bring a new standpoint to the work, I am not convinced it succeeds; at least, it did not succeed so well for me as it apparently has for many. The drama is presented in the Governess’s flashbacks from a psychiatric hospital, events at Bly presumably at least having contributed to her committal. Scenic projections onto the hospital set lead us back to the house and its grounds: to my eyes, a little clumsily. This was clearly a traumatic, horrific experience for the Governess, all the more so as presented in a finely observed, deeply compassionate performance from Ailish Tynan. There is splendidly creepy – and chillingly meaningful – children’s play, for instance with Flora and her doll.

The problem – and I am not sure this was Bywater’s intention – is that in giving the impression the events may straightforwardly have been imagined by the Governess, the drama veers in a one-sided direction that has one ultimately question what the point of it might be. Asking ‘did the Governess see the ghosts’ is of course a reasonable and indeed necessary question; proceeding as Bywater does in her programme note and also, so it seems, onstage, to ask ‘Did she have a personality disorder?’ risks missing the point. ‘Ambiguity is what makes it unsettling,’ Bywater adds. Precisely, which is why it seems an odd move to rid it of most of that ambiguity; more disturbingly, it comes close to turning the Governess’s distress into a spectacle, and eclipsing the ‘real’ question of what has been done to the children. Having the Governess imagine so much seems both implausible and undesirable. It is perfectly possible, of course, to adopt a partial standpoint; many stagings of all manner of works do, with greater and lesser success. The Turn of the Screw, however, emerges somewhat shortchanged—whilst at the same time, to be fair, far from fruitlessly interrogated. 

Tynan’s performance was absolutely central to those fruits, both detailed and skilfully sketching the broader picture. Eleanor Dennis’s Miss Jessel and Robert Murray’s Peter Quint were similarly detailed portrayals, highly commendable, though the underlying premise perhaps worked all the more against them. Gweneth Ann Rand’s Mrs Grose, by turn warm and distanced, was permitted to offer greater ambiguity. Victoria Nekhaenko’s Flora and Jerry Louth’s Miles were both excellent too, walking dramatic tightropes with great skill and credibility, the latter’s icy delivery in particular both bringing home and into question the theme of innocence’s loss in work and staging. Alan Oke’s Prologue as medical consultant offered a masterclass in diction and framing, surtitles in fact proving unnecessary throughout.

Prologue (Alan Oke)

Ward’s musical interpretation seemed to have been formulated with Bywater’s concept in mind. Especially in the first act, a looser, more rhapsodic approach, suggestive of psychological disorder and even a shift from ghost story into outright horror, was prevalent. What I missed was a stronger sense of line, of the workings of scenic and longer-term construction, so crucial to this opera’s dramaturgy. Perhaps by design, this fell into clearer focus after the interval, suggesting a conflict between freedom and determinism far from irrelevant to the musical as well as stage action. Moments of horror registered in vividly pictorial fashion, at times presaging the desiccated late world of Death in Venice; their integration in this, perhaps Britten’s most constructivist score, was less clear.

Ultimately, then, Bywater’s production did not for me cohere as well as McVicar’s more straightforward yet deeply committed production or Anneliese McKimmon’s thoughtful, more properly ambiguous staging for Opera Holland Park in 2014. Likewise, the conducting of Charles Mackerras and Steuart Bedford on those occasions did more to enable and elucidate Britten’s turning of the musical screw. I was grateful nonetheless for the opportunity to have experienced it, not least for Tynan’s gripping Governess.

Miss Jessel (Eleanor Dennis), Peter Quint, Governess

Die Walküre, London Opera Company, 3 July 2021

St John’s, Waterloo

Siegmund – Brian Smith Walters
Sieglinde – Gweneth-Ann Rand
Hunding – Simon Wilding
Wotan – Simon Thorpe
Brünnhilde – Cara McHardy
Fricka, Waltraute – Harriet Williams
Gerhilde – Jacqueline Varsey
Ortlinde – Philippa Boyle
Schwertleite – Rhonda Browne
Helmwige – Natasha Jouhl
Siegrune – Carolyn Dobbin
Grimgerde – Katharine Taylor-Jones
Rossweisse – Angharad Lyddon

Rosemary Taylor (clarinets)

Jo Harris (trumpet)

William Brown (trombone, bass trumpet)

James Bower (percussion)

Peter Selwyn (piano, music director)

Wagner’s dramas, one might think, would be among the last things to return to our cultural lives. In a way, they doubtless will. For obvious reasons, a full-scale staging of Die Meistersinger would be a tall order right now, though Bayreuth proposes a few performances this summer of Barrie Kosky’s staging (widely lauded, though certainly not by me). Covent Garden has reopened its doors with Mozart: La clemenza di Tito and, now, Don Giovanni (review forthcoming), though friends in Berlin are currently enjoying Stefan Herheim’s new Rheingold at the Deutsche Oper. (How I wish I were still there!) In London, however, such possibilities seem still quite distant. The London Opera Company’s Tristan und Isolde, performed last October with piano trio in place of orchestra, was a rare beacon of light. Now, the company returns with its second instalment of Wagner—or anything else—Die Walküre, marked as a concert performance but with a degree of acting and a few small props.


Brian Smith Walters and Gweneth-Ann Rand offered pretty much everything one could hope for in the Volsung lovers. The former’s Heldentenor thrilled vocally as any Siegmund must; there was, though, much more to him than that. Like the rest of the cast, he took advantage of the lack of full staging to show just how much character narrative can develop through words and music. From outlawry and dejection to apparent victory, only to be snatched away from him by the chief of the gods himself (ever unknown to him as his father), this was a story that demanded to be told. Rand’s dignity told in sheer stage presence—even without a ‘proper’ stage—and again through words and music. She engaged us, had us feel for her, but was no mere victim; this was a Sieglinde with agency too. The titular Valkyrie herself was familiar from Tristan. Then as Isolde, now as Brünnhilde, Cara McHardy led us not merely to follow, but to share her journey from the warrior maiden’s first, thrilling ‘Hojotoho’ to a tender, closer-to-human farewell with Simon Thorpe’s Wotan. Thorpe’s performance seemed drawn from the sagas, delivered as myth that did not preclude but rather encompassed humanity. That quality was certainly present in Harriet Williams’s uncommonly sympathetic Fricka. She not only made her case—its chilling logic is, on one level at least, readily apparent—but had us understand why. Simon Wilding’s jet-black Hunding proved the perfect foil to Volsung Lenz, another considered and highly dramatic portrayal. Brünnhilde’s Valkyrie sisters impressed equally in solo and ensemble performance, aided by a lucid instrumental ride from Peter Selwyn and company.


My principal reservation nonetheless concerned the arrangement itself: not, of course, the act of arranging, but the choices made. Tristan’s piano trio with conductor (the excellent Michael Thrift) worked considerably better for me. There will always be pros and cons, and the presence of bass clarinet in particular certainly had its Wagnerian moments. The choice of clarinet/bass clarinet, trumpet, bass trumpet/trombone, percussion (mostly timpani), and piano nonetheless seemed odd. It may not have been a choice; performing forces often are not. A few times, players and singers fell out of sync, likewise instrumental ensemble itself: doubtless to be expected, though perhaps a few times more than one might have hoped. Still, I should not carp. The openings of the second and, as mentioned, third acts in particular thrilled, ensemble seemingly reinvigorated. In Wagner-starved London, few will have been disappointed. Let us see what the London Opera Company, currently seeking sponsorship, comes up with for Siegfried next year.


St John’s, Waterloo will now close until next year for restoration, the first major work to Francis Octavius Bedford’s Greek Revival building since 1951, when it was rebuilt as the official church of the Festival of Britain. That festival helped bring hope and light back to London after the privations of war and rationing. St John’s has helped many of us over the past year, not least as home to the Waterloo Festival, with its actualised theme of ‘respair’, the return of hope after a period of despair. I look forward to its reopening and, in the meantime, the continuation of its crucial ministry to neighbourhood, city, and beyond.

Philip Venables, 4.48 Psychosis, Royal Opera, 24 April 2018

Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith

Images: ROH/Stephen Cummiskey

Gwen – Gweneth-Ann Rand

Jen – Lucy Hall

Suzy – Susanna Hurrell

Clare – Samantha Price

Emily – Rachael Lloyd

Lucy – Lucy Schaufer

Ted Huffman (director)

Hannah Clark (designs)

D.M. Wood (lighting)

Pierre Martin (video)

Sound Intermedia (sound design)

Sarah Fahie, Rc-Annie (movement)

CHROMA

Richard Baker (conductor)

Philip Venables’s 4.48 Psychosis, based on Sarah Kane’s final play, seems to have received a largely rapturous reception, at least from opera critics, on its first outing in 2016. I missed it then, so was very curious to catch it on its revival: one of the Royal Opera’s ventures outside Covent Garden – perhaps aptly, in a theatre, the Hammersmith Lyric, known for its spoken theatre rather than for opera. I seem to be somewhat out on a limb here – only somewhat, since my impressions are far from uniformly negative – but I am afraid I found myself, on the basis of a first encounter, more troubled by doubts than some. (I should certainly not put it stronger than that.) It is genuinely not my intent to find fault for the sake of it; I suspect, moreover, that much may more be a matter of my own aesthetic preconceptions and preoccupations. However, given so enthusiastic a reception, there is perhaps room also for a moderately dissenting voice; it is not as if anyone won over is going to have his or her mind changed by someone who failed to ‘get it’.

Effort has certainly been extended, by composer, production team, and performers alike, in transforming this enigmatic, fragmentary play into an opera. As is often, although far from always the case, that has involved an element of simplification. We have characters and a more concrete setting, the latter still at a relative level of abstraction and/or malleability. The same could be said of the former, barring the protagonist, Gwen, and her psychiatrist (one presumes), Lucy, and even they can come together in the mass of five voices so as to present something beyond, or perhaps before, mere individuality. The use of ensemble often works well, breaking down or not, as the case may be – not unlike what we see on stage. A central narrative is much clearer: if, in the play, we know where everything is heading, even without knowing that that was precisely where Kane’s life was heading, temporal sequence is perhaps clearer, or at least less fragmentary, which may or may not be the same thing.

There is genuine musico-theatrical imagination, arguably innovation, too. Use of titles to present unspoken or unsung thoughts and words is not unknown, often playing, as here, with mismatch between what we see and what we hear. Here, however, it often seems an especially apt response. If an oft-posed – too often, perhaps – question in opera, is ‘Why are they singing?’ then here one might ask, ‘Why are they not singing?’ Two percussionists in the ‘pit’ – actually above the stage, adding, alongside some of the multifarious musical styles employed, to something of a nightclub feel – correspond syllabically with each other, ‘their’ or rather the ‘characters’’ words ‘typed’ out below. Likewise the psychiatric test of counting down in sevens makes its near-deadly appearance on that wall of further action between instrumentalists and stage. There was certainly no gainsaying the excellence of the musical performances either. Gweneth-Ann Rand and Lucy Schaufer stood perhaps as first among equals, but this was a vocal ensemble to be reckoned with by any standards. Likewise the players of CHROMA under Richard Baker’s clearly expert direction proved a match for any new music ensemble. Without knowing the work at all, there seemed little doubt that we were hearing what we should, in duly incisive performances.

And yet, I had a nagging suspicion, sometimes more than that, that it was performative and production excellence that were pulling this together in the direction it wanted – or we wanted it – to go. Was there actually that much more to the mélange of sections of music, often perhaps on the verge of noise – a meaningful distinction or not? – here? After all, a confused barrage of sounds may perhaps lend itself a little too readily to depiction of or engagement in psychosis. What of the clichés of Bach quotation and a modernised – post-modernised? – early music ‘lament’? Perhaps, though, that is the point. I readily acknowledge that it might be. Is not treating operatic music simply ‘as music’ almost always to miss the point? As a scholar of Wagner and opera more generally, I can hardly deny that. Likewise to make comparisons to original source material; again, as a scholar and indeed devotee of… Perhaps, then, it was more of a matter of my not necessarily having ‘liked’ the often popular musical styles, whether taped (presumably) or live. Again, that may well be the, or at least a, point. It is hardly much of a criticism to say ‘I did not like that.’

Even, at a more fundamental level, my doubt as to how much of an opera this was, interest in the voice, whether ‘intrinsic’ or ‘dramatic’, not always immediately apparent, might well be answered with many historical and contemporary examples of that too being the point. I could not help but think of Stravinsky’s typically artful twin avowal and disavowal of participation in such debates: ‘The Rake’s Progress seemed to have been created for journalistic debates concerning: a) the historical validity of the approach; and, b) the question whether I am guilty of imitation and pastiche. If the Rake contains imitations, however – of Mozart, as has been said – I will gladly allow the charge (given the breadth of the Aristotelian word), if I may thereby release people from the argument and bring them to the music.’ Was I involved in the drama, wherever that lay? Yes. If so, does it matter what my ‘ideas’ of opera might be? Probably not. After all, there is, or at least was, a long operatic tradition, both non-Wagnerian and non-Stravinskian, in which ‘the work’ takes less than centre-stage, in which the performative, contingent element is stronger. Perhaps Venables’s opera, then, lies closer to Rossini and Donizetti than to those works with which I stand more at home, and therein lies my ‘problem’; perhaps that problem is mine, and mine alone.

My next London opera visit will be to hear George Benjamin’s new work, also from the Royal Opera. Who knows what that will hold? I suspect, however, based upon his first two operas, that it will prove more to my taste, perhaps to my understanding too.