SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Britten, The Turn of the Screw: Soloists, Orchestra of the English National Opera cond. Garry Walker. Directed by David McVicar. London Coliseum, 1.12. 2007 (ME)

George Longworth (Miles) / Nazan Fikret (Flora) / Rebecca Evans (Governess) / Ann Murray (Mrs Grose
 

English National Opera regards Britten as its ‘house composer’ so it is gratifying that the company’s second major success in six months (not too bad a record) should be with a Britten work: this production by David McVicar comes to ENO from the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, and like the earlier ‘Death in Venice’ by Deborah Warner it is deeply conventional despite the occasional gloss of originality.

Rebecca Evans and Ann Murray make for perfect casting as the Governess and Mrs Grose: both have highly individual, at times edgy voices, and both are adept at suggesting surging passions beneath maternal exteriors. This Governess is presented as an heroic failure rather than a deluded participant, a concept which works equally well although it forfeits some of the intimacy we might otherwise feel for the character, and Murray’s Mrs Grose was rather more cosy than I would like for such an enigmatic character – fortunately there was enough mystery in the voice to compensate for this.

The two ‘innocents’ were superbly taken by Nazan Fikret, already an experienced Flora, and Jacob Moriarty who will be remembered by anyone who saw the ROH Wozzeck in which he gave a touching portrayal of the protagonist’s son – the ‘ceremony of innocence’ seemed to have been drowned out of this boy at a very early age, and the way in which his manipulative quality was more than suggested, was quite disturbing.

Timothy Robinson seemed to have been asked to emulate various portrayals of Uriah Heep – odd, since Quint is far from ‘very ‘umble’ – it was also strange that this Quint had so little in the way of dangerous allure, his power mainly suggested by the voice, a plaintive and exactly focussed, if hardly mellifluous, one. Cheryl Barker’s Miss Jessel evoked beauty in both voice and person, although she was hardly differentiated from the ‘living’ Governess in that her presence was fairly cosy as opposed to malevolent. In the scene where she appears in the schoolroom, she merely walks on and sits down pleasantly, as if she were an invited guest – what a contrast to the RCM’s stunning production in which the import of Miss Jessel’s tragedy and her baleful influence were so wonderfully suggested by the way in which she suddenly appeared, one arm draped over the table and a look in her eye as if she could kill with a glance. In the original story, Henry James writes ‘…her haggard beauty and her unutterable woe, she had looked at me long enough to appear to say that her right to sit at my table was as good as mine to sit at hers.’ There was nothing of this in the present production.

Rebecca Evans (Governess) / Timothy Robinson (Peter Quint)
 

Indeed, chills were few and far between at the Coliseum: even Quint’s ‘Take it, take it’ was gently persuasive rather than spine-tingling, and the ‘apparitions’ at the tower and the lake, whilst visually striking, did not inspire much in the way of shivers. The wide, half-empty set, dressed as if for a rather trendy minimalist Christmas, did little to suggest the claustrophobia of the old house in its marshy setting, and the frequent sliding of the frosty panels and the constant movement of supernumeraries were unwelcome distractions.

The orchestra gave a delicate, nuanced reading of the score under Garry Walker, with some finely detailed strings and spooky celeste around Quint – indeed, there were many instances where the only frisson was coming from the pit. This is a visually attractive, very well sung production, with sensitively evocative lighting (Adam Silverman) and I went home feeling somewhat stirred, but definitely not shaken.


Melanie Eskenazi

Pictures © Neil Libbert / English National Opera