The CultureMap Review
You'll get Lost in HGO's quirky, spellbinding Turn of the Screw
Henry James’ 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw might seem like a strange common denominator for prime-time television and opera, but fans of the ABC hit series Lost know that it turns up at various locations on the island, most notably on the barracks shelf where it conceals the scratchy “orientation film.” In one Lost episode, the bored and hostile Sawyer actually reads some of it. Opera aficionados know the compelling text as one of Benjamin Britten’s most skillful efforts, carefully organized into a prologue and 16 brief scenes tied together with glorious musical interludes.
Houston Grand Opera’s current production (on loan from Opera Australia) is as spellbinding and quirky as a good episode of Lost, and like that show, it’s never quite clear which of the characters is exactly “real” and which are just angry ghosts. James had The Living Dead down perfectly long before they became horror-film clichés.
Premiered in London 55 years ago, The Turn of the Screw didn’t take long to get under the skin of enthusiastic audiences. Today it is widely performed, perhaps because it’s readily understandable to English-speaking audiences (HGO provided super-titles in case you weren’t sure what you’d heard) and because the score has its economical side, requiring only six singers and 20 or so musicians. It’s a chamber work, here in Houston made into something far grander but without losing its intimacy. Stephen Curtis’ sets retain Victorian and Gothic elements while experimenting successfully with oddities of scale. His designs, with their gargoyles and crowded ornaments, recall the Metropolis Loft building on West Gray if it were doused in black spray paint.
The musical phrases will upset your expectations right off the bat. Instead of a majestic overture, Turn of the Screw begins with a dissonant piano reverie, escorting us into an underworld of extreme emotion and psychosis. There are scratching harp passages, plucked cellos, and a church scene with a stunning clamor of gongs. By the time swooning Amanda Roocroft arrives as the new Governess at Bly, a troubled estate with its too-perfect siblings, the timpani is fluttering just like her racing heart.
The stark texture rarely includes any ensemble work, making this extraordinarily challenging for the singers. There’s nowhere to hide, since every vocal line is completely exposed. Only at the conclusion of Act I do the entire cast sing together, and the effect is a well-planned and creepy spectacle. Like Lost, one searches the metaphors and symbols to decipher the situation. When young Miles appears in a duet with the “vision” of Quint, his alleged former tormentor, the creepy man stands above him shouting euphemisms of identity: “I am the hero highwayman plundering the land,” he sings, adding, “in me, secret, half-formed desires meet.”
The young Michael Kepler Meo makes his HGO debut in the daunting role of the pedophile’s victim, having performed it last season with Portland Opera. He’s a kind of miracle throughout. Joélle Harvey is his confident sister Flora, with a clear and exacting intonation, and Tamara Wilson truly steals the show as Miss Jessel, the most brazen ghost of them all.
