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THE THE TURN TURN OF THE OF THE SCREW SCREW The Turn of the Screw is a 20th-century Wellington The Opera House English chamber opera composed by October 3 & 5 at 7.30pm Benjamin Britten with a libretto by Auckland Myfanwy Piper. The libretto is based on the ASB Waterfront Theatre October 18 & 23 at 7.30pm Composed by Benjamin Britten novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry October 20 at 2.30pm Libretto byMyfanwy Piper James. The opera was commissioned by the Venice Biennale and given its world premiere on 14 September 1954, at the Teatro La Fenice, Venice. Please note: Information is correct at time of printing. New Zealand Opera 2019 The performance lasts approximately reserves the right to make alterations to the information as required due two hours and fifteen minutes including to unavoidable circumstances. Use of cameras, mobile phones and a twenty minute interval. Sung in English. recording devices is strictly prohibited. Latecomers will not be admitted until a A New Zealand Opera production. suitable break in the performance. WE ARE PROUD TO SUPPORT THE FREEMASONS NEW ZEALAND OPERA CHORUS www.freemasonsfoundation.org.nz THE TURN OF THE SCREW Tēnā koutou Welcome to New Zealand Opera’s of human dignity, we can all draw production of Benjamin Britten’s together to achieve our ambition for The Turn of the Screw, which marks the future. a turning point in the company’s direction, being the first production The future is in the work we do to be directed by Thomas de Mallet together, through collaborative Burgess. endeavours, ensuring we develop and offer opera to a wider, diverse While ghost tales were made popular audience. in eighteenth century England, created as extensions of everyday Come celebrate opera through this reality, today New Zealand Opera innovative interpretation of a ghost must consider the reality of our own tale, made relevant for the time and art form within the unique setting of place in which we live. Aotearoa New Zealand. At New Zealand Opera, Mana toi, we Ngā manaakitanga value creativity and honour the artists With best wishes, of our many diverse communities. We want to celebrate the difference opera Annabel Holland makes to our lives. New Zealand Opera Chair We are pleased to share an all New Zealand cast with you for this season of The Turn of the Screw. Through the artists’ and creatives’ pursuit of excellence and in their expression These performances of The Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten with libretto by Myfanwy Piper, after a story by Henry James are given by permission of Hal Leonard Australia Pty Ltd, exclusive agents for Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd of London. THE TURN OF THE SCREW Director’s notes, Thomas de Mallet Burgess We can approach the work as a ghost ceremony of innocence is drowned" Her recent past has been crammed story or we can read it as an intricate referencing a practice of purity, a with the most bewildering push and portrait of an inexperienced young rite of passage, and something that pull between girlhood and adulthood, woman who steps into a dysfunctional represents a structure and order. This between reality, expectation and world of overwhelming responsibility. is now disintegrating before our eyes. fantasy. She has had to leave home It is almost impossible to pin this work And the trauma is embodied in all and seek work far away. She has been down. Are the ghosts real or are the the characters, even Mrs Grose who moved by a meeting with the sort of events that unfold the product of an knows about the past and carries it man she has only dreamed of or read obsessive heroine? Ghosts are often tightly wound within her. about in novels. She must do a great catalysts in Henry James’s stories, favour for this handsome man, which appearing at transitional times. The demise of the children is key to makes her feel she has worth. Their presence excavates the past the theme of corruption of innocence. Anxiety is at the heart of this story. And our experience of it. If we feel and its hidden secrets, reveals and Their lives are already broken, Her mania is for locating meaning illumines. Ghosts show us things we blighted by bereavement, loss and in whatever she sees. And she a worry, concern, apprehension at the uncertain outcome then we wouldn’t otherwise see. Even perhaps neglect. They have been orphaned constantly monitors herself. the secrets of our consciousness. multiple times. Six people closest Her feelings are reported as have attended well to the psychological drama. It is a story built on to them have died – father, mother, facts. The more information she Trying to pin the truth down has the grandfather, grandmother, Quint and provides the more confusing and ambiguity. It invites us to reach for resolution on things unspoken arbitrariness of a child’s game where Jessel. They know more people who claustrophobic things become. and unspeakable. More fool us. As Henry James said of his story: melody and accompaniment are at are dead than alive. In the short story, With her at the centre of the work cross purposes. The opera gains its we are told their grandparents died we have a central nervous system “Only make the reader’s general vision of evil intense enough, and his power from the way it sets distinct in India. And so the children have that is tense, fraught, alarming, opposing currents running forcefully moved continents - warm to cold; brimming and highly strung. (sic) own experience, his own imagination, his own sympathy (with against each other. These currents home to boarding school; into the destabilise. They confuse and subvert care of strangers. It is understandable The Governess needs the ghosts the children) and horror (of their false friends) will supply him quite the way information is received. that they would turn in on each other as they will force the children to need sufficiently with all the particulars.” The level of anxiety ratchets up and Even the sweet English folk song for comfort and understanding. her at the deepest level. They lend her and nursery rhyme "Lavender's Blue", They are survivors. life meaning. down through the episodic nature of the prologue and sixteen scenes, sung by the children, is also about a girl keeping the singer’s bed warm. It is hard for the presence of the But then again, if she has made them the musical variations of the ‘Screw’ theme built around a twelve note Governess to register as fully with up so have we. Britten wanted children to play the them as all the things they have lost. row and Britten’s use of the upper registers of the human voice in children but found it impossible to As a result Miles and Flora never Thomas de Mallet Burgess characterisation. Everything points to the vulnerability of innocence, cast a suitable girl for the role of Flora. fully meet the feelings of love she Director The libretto refers at one point to a conceives for them. including our own. line from a poem by W. B. Yeats "The Conductor Holly Mathieson is this year’s Ryman Dame Malvina Major Foundation Mina Foley Associate Artist, returning to New Zealand for her debut with New Zealand Opera’s 2019 produc�on of The Turn of The Screw. New Zealand-born Holly Mathieson, based in Glasgow, has recently enjoyed a 2018/19 season that saw her debut with the BBC Sco�sh Symphony Orchestra, BBC Na�onal Orchestra of Wales, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Opera North, English Touring Opera, Na�onal Youth Orchestra GB, Ulster Orchestra and Symphony Nova Sco�a, as well as return appearances with the Auckland Philharmonia, Sco�sh Chamber Orchestra, Southbank Sinfonia, Royal College of Music Philharmonic Orchestra, a na�onal tour with Sco�sh Ballet and performances at Garsington Opera Fes�val. The Ryman DMMF Mina Foley Award is in memory of the New Zealand soprano who died in 2007. Mina Foley was a hugely promising talent who cap�vated local audiences in the 1950s and was the first singer trained by Auckland teacher Dame Sister Mary Leo, who also taught Dame Malvina Major, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa and Dame Heather Begg. Sadly, Mina was never able to achieve her full poten�al as a singer due to poor health, but her rela�vely short career was remarkable nonetheless. dmmfounda�on.org.nz Proud supporters of New Zealand Opera’s Dame Malvina Major Emerging Artists and Young Artist programmes, and the PHOTO: DAVID ROWLAND DAVID PHOTO: Ryman DMMF Mina Foley Award. PHOTO: SIMON WATT SIMON PHOTO: MELVILLE MARTY PHOTO: Help us realise the potential of New Zealand’s best young talent. Donate now at dmmfoundation.org.nz dmmfoundation THE Britten’s first composition draft of (Mostly he would erase errors with haunting ‘Malo’ song from Act I. TURN OF THE the Prologue is curiously stilted. the India rubber he kept to hand, not So what exactly has she won? She SCREW The harmony is static, the melody write a whole new draft.) In the first, has pushed Quint away from Miles, scale-like, the harmonic symbolism once Miles has finally denounced and has seen off Miss Jessel, but unformed. There is none of the Quint, the ghost disappears pretty the boy is dead in her arms. Did she drama of the final version, none of smartly, and the boy collapses into literally suffocate him with her love and James’s frightening Victorian parlour The Governess’s arms. In the second comfort? Did this spectral showdown atmosphere, where we really feel draft, Miles collapses into her arms and Miles’s enforced denunciation – as though we are gathered beneath after the denunciation, while The ‘Peter Quint, you devil!’ – rob him of gently hissing gas lamps, steeling Governess and Quint sing in unison his lifeblood? It’s a pyrrhic victory, ourselves to hear a terrifying ghost the ghost’s beguiling, melismatic regardless.

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