A programme for our production of The Turn of the Screw for the 2024-2025 season. Featuring articles and content about this production.

With its dark, evocative score, Britten’s The Turn of the Screw is one of the most unnerving of all operas. Told in flashback from a psychiatric ward, a young governess is terrorised by unseen forces in a remote country house. The setting is Bronte-esque, but the menace is pure Hitchcock.

A young, inexperienced governess is invited to a bleak country house, home to two orphaned children, both deeply troubled, possibly possessed. Her anxiety mounts. There are strangled cries in the night, a figure on the tower, a face at the window. But are they just figments of her imagination, or malign presences threatening the charges in her care? She can’t be sure – and nor can we – as the tension builds towards a nerve-shredding climax.

Directed and designed by Isabella Bywater, the production features Ailish Tynan in the role of the Governess. Central to the opera’s eerie subject, the roles of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint are sung by former ENO Harewood artist Eleanor Dennis and Robert Murray. The production is conducted by Duncan Ward and – for the final two performances on 29 and 31 Oct – Charlotte Corderoy, who both make their ENO debut.

Libretto by Myfanwy Piper (based on the 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James).