Benjamin Britten the Turn of the Screw

Benjamin Britten I • • The Turn of the Screw Edited by PATRICIA HOWARD Lecturer in Music The Open University The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books of granted by Henry 1711 at 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584. CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge London New York New Rochelle Melbourne Sydney 2 Myfanwy Piper's (The Turn of the Screw': libretto and synopsis PATRICIA HOWARD To transfer to the operatic stage a story so meticulously constructed to manipulate the responses of a reader poses enormous problems. The chief of these is to retain all the ambiguities of the plot so that the opera-goer, as much as the reader, can 'keep both stories in play at once' (see above, p. 21). Not to attempt this, to settle for either of the simple interpretations of the story, would have been an act of vandalism by no means unparalleled in the history of opera, but totally uncharacteristic of Britten. Myfanwy Piper is clear about the composer's aims: 'Neither Britten nor I ever intended to interpret the work, only to recreate it fora different medium' (Piper in Herbert (ed.), p. 11). This intention has been estinneri Lord Harewood has sug- gested that the reading which Vivien Jones identified as the 'first story' - the innocent governess and the objective reality of the ghosts - had priority with Britten: 'Harewood was adamant on the ambiva- lence of the governess's position. To him it was crucial never to know if she was mad or if everyone else was under the control of a malign influence. Britten felt he had to take sides, and he had decided there was something malign at Bly' (Blyth, p. 82). Mrs Piper, however, offers this insight into Britten's attitude to the story: 'I don't think Ben really took sides: but James's story certainly underlines his own emotional attitude to the corruptibility of innocence. That evil exists whether in life or in the mind. and is capable of corrupting - or perhaps not necessarily corrupting but causing the loss of innocence. - he was, I think, quite certain. The Governess's good intentions were — destroyed by her experiences, whether real or imagined, and her love of Miles was corrupted, in that it became possessiveness and she was aware of it. Hence the last words "What have we done between us?" Many productions of the opera endorse only the 'first story' interpretation. To produce the opera so that it favours the 'second story' - the evil emanating wholly from the deluded governess - has 23 24 Patricia Howard Myfanwy Piper's The Turn of the Screw' 25 also been attempted, though such a production is difficult to bring turned down by Britten because it was 'wrong for the tightness of the off unless some of the opera's stage directions are ignored. The recreated work' (Piper in Herbert (ed.), p. 11).4 libretto, however, is written in such a way that many of the story's The decision to open the opera not with a crowded stage of anony- ambiguities are retained, and this chapter sets out to show that if any mous guests but with the solitary figure of the narrator yielded an performance of the work offers a single interpretation, it is the interesting dramatic bonus. In James's story the house-party func- producer who has chosen from options left open by the composer tions primarily as an introduction, but a sensitive reader can carry and librettist. forward an awareness of its presence, remembering that the story is The most immediate differences between James's story and Mrs being related to this particular audience and it is these assembled Piper's libretto are structural. The story opens with the house-party, guests who will ultimately decide between the two interpretations. In and every detail leading up to the main narration - the locked the opera the house-party is 'played' by the audience in the opera drawer, the posting of the key, the exactly calculated passage of time house. In Mrs Piper's Prologue James's storyteller, Douglas, before the manuscript can be delivered - serves to 'authenticate' the addresses them directly, and they are more closely involved in judg- ghost story itself. This pretended realism is carried forward into the ing the evidence of the sixteen incidents the opera sets forth than narration of events at Bly. It is 'read' from the governess's own they could be if another audience were interposed between the narra- account: a technique which enables her feelings and impressions, her tor and themselves. partial knowledge and gradual understanding, or misunderstanding, It is, then, surprising to discover that the Prologue was a com- to play as large a part as the incidents themselves. (Indeed, in the sec- paratively late addition. The opera was to begin with the governess's ond reading of the story, these feelings and impressions are the only journey to Bly. After the first few scenes of Act I had already been significant incidents.) This narrative technique is essentially literary, written and set, however, the producer, Basil Coleman, pointed out and there is no obvious way in which it could be transferred to the that the work risked being 'much too short' (Piper in Herbert (ed.), opera. The governess is not always on stage and it is the moments p. 11). The length of an opera can be crucial to its commercial viabil- when she is absent - notably the scene between the children and the ity,' and it was primarily in response to Coleman's observation that ghosts which concludes Act I and the 'colloquy' between the ghosts the Prologue, which now seems an inevitable introduction to the which opens Act II - which can seem to stamp as indisputably objec- opera, came to be written (see Chapter 3, p. 65). tive the 'something malign at Bly'. 2 The Prologue is set in recitative and the libretto follows closely the Practical considerations initially precluded staging the house- plain, quasi-realistic diction of James's narrator. Throughout the party. In post-war Britain the economic vulnerability endemic to opera we notice Mrs Piper using phrases and whole conversations opera was at a particularly critical stage, and Britten's chamber from James, though she often elects to sacrifice some of his rhythms, operas, which include The Rape of Lucretia (1946), Albert Herring in particular the sequences of unfinished sentences which help to cre- (1947) and The Little Sweep (1949) besides The Ten of the Screw, ate the atmosphere of unspoken imaginings in the tale. Mrs Piper's were devised for a small body of both singers and instrumentalists libretto is a simplification and a condensation of James, as these for commercial as well as for artistic reasons.' The Screw fulfilled the parallel passages show: needs of the English Opera Group admirably, requiring only four or five adult singers. But these proved to be too few to recreate the `Then your manuscript - ?' `Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand.' changing moods of James's Christmas party, in which the author He hung fire again. 'A woman's. She has been dead these twenty years. She begins with a largish gathering of guests which is deliberately sent me the pages in question before she died.' (James, p. 8) depleted of the insensitive and the idly curious to obtain the sym- It is a curious story. pathetic audience of intimates the story requires. Mrs Piper reveals I have it written in faded ink - a woman's hand, governess to two children - that the possibility of a house-party scene was also rejected on stylis- long ago. (Piper, Prologue)6 tic grounds: a late redrafting which opened the work with a 'rather The Prologue makes one other point, and makes it so delicately gay scene from Henry James's introductory ghost story party' was and indeed so elliptically that it would be easy to overlook it. James's 26 Patricia Howard Myfanwy Piper's The Turn of the Screw' 27 introductory scenes make clear the fact that his ghost story is also a first, but growing in volume and rising in pitch till it explodes in the love story. The governess falls instantly in love with the guardian and nervous, questioning music of the journey to Bly. accepts the rather forbidding assignment solely on account of this For the opera proper Britten and Piper devised a formal scheme infatuation: which translates the structure of the story into musical conventions: `She was young, untried, nervous: it was a vision of serious duties and little When quite early in our discussions the idea of three acts was abandoned company, of really great loneliness. She hesitated - took a couple of days to and Britten planned the opera in terms of short scenes linked by orchestral consult and consider. But the salary offered much exceeded her modest passages, the nature of these scenes, except for the first scene of Act II, was measure, and on a second interview she faced the music, she engaged.' And clearly dictated by an analysis of the text; what had to be invented were the Douglas, with this, made a pause that, for the benefit of the company, moved details. (Piper in Herbert (ed.), p. 9) me to throw in - 'The moral of which was of course the seduction exercised by the splendid James's structure is crucial to his purpose (see Chapter 1, p. 8). The young man. She succumbed to it.' story is written as a series of episodes because it is concerned with He got up and, as he had done the night before, went to the fire, gave a stir presenting testimony: a chain of separate incidents, we might almost to a log with his foot, then stood a moment with his back to us.

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