Alexandra Coghlan

Chilling out | 11 July 2019

Plus: a charming, heartfelt new production of Noye's Fludde that shows off Britten's skill in writing for children

Think of the children in opera. Not knowing sopranos and mezzos, pigtailed and pinafored or tightly trousered-up to look child-like, but actual children. There are Mozart’s Three Boys, Menotti’s Amahl, possibly Debussy’s Yniold and Handel’s Oberto and, if you stretch a point, Marie’s little son in Wozzeck. But that’s about it. Until, that is, you come to Benjamin Britten.

It’s a rare Britten opera that doesn’t include a child. Whether it’s Grimes’s doomed apprentice, the chattering powder monkeys of HMS Indomitable, teenage vision Tadzio in Death in Venice, Tytania’s fairies or the watchful Miles and Flora, they are ever-present, but why? There’s something about innocence, certainly, but it’s interesting just how often Britten muddies their symbolism, swapping simple purity for something altogether murkier.

There’s an otherness, an uncanny, ungraspable quality to many of these children. How much do they see, know, understand? And how much do we really know of them? These questions reach their peak in The Turn of the Screw, Britten and Myfanwy Piper’s lean, telling adaptation of Henry James’s ghost story. Louisa Muller’s new production for Garsington treads lightly and discreetly through the tale’s tangle of ambiguities and uncertainties, playing deftly with suggestion, illusion and imagination to create something genuinely chilling — a staging of slow-creep menace and sweaty, night-time terrors.

It’s an elegant trick to pull off in Garsington’s glass-box theatre — sunshine and garden views streaming in on every side, all asserting their comfort, their certainty. But Muller and lighting designer Malcolm Rippeth play the long game, drawing out the opera’s semblance of normality for as long as possible. Is that a figure we see through Christopher Oram’s cloudy conservatory windows, or just a shadow? Even Peter Quint’s first coaxing call is so soft you couldn’t swear you hadn’t imagined it.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in