Elgan Llyr Thomas as Peter Quint. Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic
Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Royal Opera: Bassem Akiki
Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House, March 29, 2026
In the grimmest of situations, Benjamin Britten has a gift for light, even humour, which points up the surrounding darkness. On our way to the searing endings of Peter Grimes and Billy Budd we occasionally come up for air, and there are false dawns, too, in The Turn of the Screw. A walk in the fresh air to the water and the Sunday morning trip to church brighten the score. But in a new production for the Royal Opera House, there is little light, only shade.
The stage is pitch black for the whole of the Prologue, and things only get darker. But what a great achievement by tenor Elgan Llŷr Thomas, invisibly and compellingly setting the scene, with the backstory for the journey of the Governess to the home of her new wards. When she appears, we see only her face, but as soon as she emerges fully there are virtually non-stop video projections overlaying the action, which is set in the 1950s of the piece’s composition. In consequence we see many moments from two angles at once, while the ghostly Peter Quint and dead governess Miss Jessel are tracked on stage by doubles, often moving furniture.
There are, in short, too many people in what can be a creepily deserted house. Fortunately, Llŷr Thomas is back, now as Quint, insidious of manner and alarmingly persuasive in tone. His victim, little Miles, is lost to him. Fellow former Harewood Artist, soprano Isabelle Peters, is Governess, her voice full of optimism and warmth at the outset, with high hopes for new job.
Claire Barnett-Jones as Mrs Grose and Isabelle Peters as Governess. Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic
Mezzo soprano Claire Barnett-Jones, also a former Harewood Artist, sings housekeeper Mrs Grose, in an interpretation fraught with anxiety from the outset. We never meet the uncle who has entrusted the orphans to the household staff at Bly, but this aloof male character, has, like Quint, an impossible hold, this time over the Governess.
Kate Royal as the Governess’s predecessor, caresses her own unborn child even as she controls Flora, brightly sung by Emilia Blossom Ostroumoff. Glenn Tong, one of two trebles cast as Miles, stepped in at this performance, chilling the bone with his mysterious “Malo, malo..” and, disturbingly, dressing like Quint in bags and braces.
Despite uniformly fine performances, the tension sags, possibly because conductor Bassem Akiki, making his house debut in the Linbury Theatre, does not let the music surge. Nonetheless, there is drive in the unsettling timpani and percussion of Chris Ridley and eerie piano and celesta of Patrick Milne. Britten’s scoring for only 13 players, in effect an augmented string quartet, drawn from the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, is proof of the power of economy, but that only emphasises how over-elaborate is Natalia Abrahami’s and Michael Levine’s production. It’s hard to be scared with so much going on.
A stage gradually flooded reflects the WB Yeats line incorporated into Myfanwy Piper’s libretto, “The ceremony of innocence is drowned”. He wrote it as a response to the corruption of war. Here it is the house, and Flora’s dolly, nearly, that drown, singers and actors sploshing through the rising waters, a device also used in Garsington Opera’s production of The Turn of the Screw in 2019, and all the rage on the theatre stage. All that wetness, all those electronics. Now I’m scared, but for all the wrong reasons.