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The Turn of the Screw

Opera

The Turn of the Screw Tickets

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About

A ghost story. Revealed. Turn by turn.

Benjamin Britten’s haunting operatic version of Henry James’s famous novella The Turn of the Screw is a chilling ghost story, saturated with menace. The story follows a young governess, performed by internationally acclaimed Kiwi soprano Anna Leese, as she arrives at a remote country house to care for two children, with only written instructions from an absent guardian who advises that he is not to be contacted. Things only get stranger.

What is real and what are the imagining of a troubled mind? The novel doesn’t make it clear, and Britten and librettist Piper leave it equally ambiguous in the opera. This is a narrative just ambivalent enough for us to project upon it our own fears. 

Governess Anna Leese
Prologue/Peter Quint Jared Holt
Miss Jessel Madeleine Pierard
Mrs Grose Patricia Wright
Miles Lukas Maher/Alexandros Swallow
Flora Olivia Forbes/Alexa Harwood

Conductor Holly Mathieson
Director Thomas de Mallet Burgess
Set and Costume Designer Tracy Grant Lord
Lighting Designer Matthew Marshall 

A New Zealand Opera production
Turn of the Screw by Benjamin Britten
Libretto by Myfanwy Piper, after a story by Henry James Published by Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd.

Contains adult themes, recommended for 15 years and older.