Britten: The Turn of the Screw by FRA MUSICA

Description

It is indeed 'a curious story,' as the prologue for The Turn of the Screw explains. The opera features a remote English country house, an old and faithful housekeeper, two young orphan children and an eager new governess sent down from London to look after them. But all is not quite as it seems in the sheltered world of Bly. Spirits from the past increasingly encroach upon the realm of the living, and one question keeps worming its way into the governess's mind: what exactly did happen between the children, their former governess and the deceased manservant, Peter Quint? Britten's brilliantly scored, insidiously compelling adaptation of Henry James's novella takes its themes of childish innocence and adult corruption, then twists and turns them to disturbing and ultimately devastating effect. FRA Musica presents Jonathan Kent's eerily unsettling staging of the work, recorded at the Glyndebourne Festival with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Jakub Hrusa.