Henry James' ghost story
Benjamin Britten's chilling score
Valery Gergiev unleashes dark spirits and inner demons
in the Mariinsky's landmark production

The Turn of the Screw is the Mariinsky Theatre's most lauded new production in recent years. Premiered in 2006, the production was awarded the Golden Mask National Theatre Award in Moscow, and restaged by London's English National Opera in 2007 to critical and popular acclaim, winning the 2008 South Bank Show Award.

Reflecting the eerie, escalating tension encoded in Benjamin Britten's beautiful and imaginative music, David McVicar's staging plunges us deep into the claustrophobic darkness of this ambiguous tale of corrupted innocence and psychological manipulation.


The Mariinsky Theatre
Renamed the Kirov during the Soviet era, St Petersburg's 226-year-old Mariinsky Theatre is one of the world's foremost opera and ballet companies. A beacon of Russian culture since its beginnings at the Imperial Court, the Mariinsky has performed under the batons of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, Mahler, Wagner, Berlioz, Sibelius, Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer, and premiered such masterpieces as The Queen of Spades, Boris Godunov, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.


David McVicar
David McVicar, named "the hottest property in opera direction" by The Independent, is well known for the musical sensitivity and theatrical flair of his productions, which have been staged at Royal Opera House, English National Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, Théâtre des Champs Elysées, La Monnaie, and by leading festivals such as Glyndebourne, Salzburg and Aldeburgh. 


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Loners and Outcasts: Benjamin Britten and The Turn of the Screw
by Robert Turnbull

Over the last decades something approaching a consensus has been reached over Benjamin Britten's operatic legacy. Peter Grimes, his second opera, performed in 1945, is generally considered his most popular contribution to the repertory, but The Turn of the Screw, premiered in 1954, has earned a reputation as the most taught and best constructed of all, and probably his masterpiece.

What drew him to the story? Britten's letters at the time reveal little of what he first made of Henry James's 1898 novella, yet one can hardly be surprised at the composer's interest. James's quasi-symbolist work goes far beyond a mere ghost story to being a disturbing and, for its time, brave meditation on Victorian sexuality and moral hypocrisy – both themes that preoccupied Britten.

Musically, the opera boasts the schematic and imaginative use of the twelve-note row, a new way of organising the 12 notes of the chromatic scale invented by the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. But it is the opera's extraordinary musical eclecticism that sets it apart. Britten managed to incorporate prayer book chants, lullabies and folk songs such as Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son into a score of astonishing economy and refinement.

The premiere in Venice was an eagerly anticipated event and conducted by Britten himself. Whatever the Italian members of the audience made of its apparent morbidezza, British critics heaped praise on the new work. Many expressed surprise that James's story was able to transmute so successfully to a musical medium. "Not since Peter Grimes has this composer composed a theatre piece so gripping and intense," wrote Virgil Thomson in The Herald Tribune.

But The Turn of the Screw was not conceived as a grand opera. The piece comprises of 16 short scenes – quite a challenge for a designer. Britten rejected the full orchestra he had used in Peter Grimes and Billy Budd for a group of 13 instruments carefully chosen for their timbre. The chilling effects made possible by this "chamber" combination of xylophone, celesta, gong and harps not only give this opera a unique musical "sound world" but act as a perfect counterpart to the disturbing effects in James’s story. "Highly fanciful and intensely atmospheric" was Thomson's evaluation.

In James's story an unnamed new governess begins a term of employment at the Essex country house, Bly. On encountering two ghostlike figures, she gradually becomes convinced that her two charges, Miles and Flora, are possessed by the spirits of Quint, a former valet, and her predecessor Miss Jessel, both of whom died under mysterious circumstances.

The housekeeper Mrs Gross confirms this, telling the Governess of Quint and Jessel's love affair and their corrupt and predatory interest in the children. Hearing that Quint preyed on Miles, and that Miss Jessel also had an "unnatural" relationship with the children, the Governess resolves to save their souls, but in doing so she also has to confront her own demons.

The opera is rich in moral complexity. Though in James's story the Governess is the only member of the household to see the ghosts, whether or how much they are a figment of her imagination is not really the question. In James just as in Britten, they exist, or at least they appear.

The issue, rather, is the Governess's moral influence, which is more negative than that of the ghosts, whether in the battle for the children’s souls or in her heightened hysteria. It certainly ends that way: in trying to pry the truth out of Miles, the Governess literally squeezes the boy to death.

Britten's genius in The Turn of the Screw is the deployment of musical references to illustrate these moral ambiguities. The twelve-note row is connected to Quint and is therefore associated in the listener's mind with his depravity, but as the motif gradually enters the musical phraseology of the Governess, the implication is that of a mirrored corruption. When Miles, in a Latin class scene invented by Britten and his librettist Myfanwy Piper, sings a chilling "Malo… I would rather be” (the song makes reference to "males" which means "bad" in Latin), the suggestion at this moment is that he is possessed by Quint.

The suggestion that Quint has designs on the boy comes with Mrs Gross's declaration that Quint was "too free with the boy" and that "he liked them pretty". Britten makes explicit what James hints at evocatively. “You read into it the evil that you know" was James's comment, and he considered it a measure of his success that many of those reading in the 1890s and beyond were appalled.

Writing for a post-Freudian public, Britten took the liberty of implying that the Governess's growing hysteria is more a result of her own emotional and sexual repression, and of behaviour that goes far beyond being maternal. Moreover, the idea that Quint and Jessel's influence might actually be liberating is certainly hinted.

In David McVicar's production for the Mariinsky Theatre, dark and austere designs set the opera very much in James's time. With the use of sliding glass panels, windows and rocking horses, designer Tanya McCallin has created a space that evokes the eerie atmosphere of haunted Bly, while Adam Silverman's murky lighting and lamp-lit rooms with dark recesses convey Victorian mustiness and claustrophobia.

McVicar has not commented publicly on the sexual aspects of the work, "Everything is suggested and nothing is stated. [Directors] have to be careful to leave a lot of gaps for the imagination of the audience to fill." However, the eroticism is given credence in the production with the clever use of Victorian dolls and the children's suggestive behaviour. There is no question that the strangely intimate kiss which McVicar makes Miles plant on the Governess's lips as he sings "You see, I am bad. I am bad, aren't I?" is meant to provoke.

While The Turn of the Screw is in no sense a gay opera, Britten's own romantic interest in adolescent boys hangs over many aspects of this work. During the rehearsal process Britten was so infatuated with David Hemmings, the actor who created the role of Miles, that he had to be escorted away from the rehearsals, lest scandal broke out.

It seems that the cast and crew became increasingly aware of the correlation between the opera's content and real life. "It was only while directing that the relationship between Miles and Quint became clearer," wrote Basil Coleman who staged the opera's premiere in Venice. This would also have been a foretaste of Death in Venice, Britten's final opera in which the older writer Aschenbach falls in love with Tadzio, a Polish adolescent in Venice.

In musical terms, Quint's melismatic calling for Miles high in the vocal register has an obvious sense of yearning. The "secret" that the two guard would not only have appalled the uptight Governess but society as a whole. Loners and social outcasts feature strongly in Britten's operas, from the child abuser Grimes to Aschenbach, or indeed the "sensitive" sailor Billy Budd.

The Turn of the Screw is McVicar's third Britten opera and his second collaboration with the Mariinsky Theatre. The production not only won Russia's most prestigious theatre award, the Golden Mask, for best opera production in 2007, Artistic Director Valery Gergiev also expressed satisfaction with the lucid and powerful staging. Gergiev chose The Turn of the Screw as his first Britten opera for its musical qualities, which he will personally demonstrate from the orchestra pit in Hong Kong.

Robert Turnbull is a freelance journalist and musician who writes regularly on cultural affairs for The International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal Asia and Opera Now.

The Story of the Mariinsky Theatre
by Natasha Rogai

Today the Mariinsky opera and orchestra are as acclaimed as the ballet company thanks to Valery Gergiev, the distinguished conductor who became Artistic Director in 1988 at the age of 35. Known for his relentless drive and limitless energy, Gergiev held the company together despite the upheavals which marked the end of Soviet rule and took it to a new level of excellence. When I first saw them in Paris in 1994 performing Mussorgsky's Khovanshchina, I was spellbound by the quality of the singing - the final chorus literally sent a shiver down the spine. Gergiev has long championed Russian composers, particularly Shostakovich and Prokofiev. He has also introduced a more modern repertoire, reflected in the choice of Britten's The Turn of the Screw for the Theatre's Hong Kong appearance.

Since 1996 Gergiev has been responsible for the Ballet as well, as Artistic and General Director. Under his leadership the Mariinsky has made the difficult transition from state-subsidised troupe to market economy success story, becoming a business brand with frequent international tours and even its own record label while preserving its unique artistic heritage.

When the Mariinsky Ballet, Opera and Orchestra perform at the 2010 Festival, Hong Kong will see over 250 years of tradition with the vision of a giant of the 21st century music world. An imperial feast indeed. (Part 3*. End)

Natasha Rogai is the dance critic of the South China Morning Post and Hong Kong correspondent of The Dancing Times and a member of the Executive Committee of the Hong Kong Dance Alliance.

*For Part I, please click here.
For Part II, please click here.