Benjamin Britten’s opera, composed in 1954, is a gripping setting of the famous novella by Henry James of strange goings-on in a remote English manor house, where a young governess has been employed to care for two children. As she struggles to protect the children from increasingly sinister forces that seem to surround them, her sense of what is real and what is not becomes thrillingly blurred.
The Turn of the Screw stands as one of the most successful operas of the past 100 years. Its evocative music, scored for a chamber orchestra of 13 players, brilliantly captures the psychological tension and eerie ambience of this classic gothic tale.