LSO Live LS 0749

Britten: The Turn of the Screw – Andrew Kennedy, Sally Matthews, Michael Clayton-Jolly, Lucy Hall, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Katherine Broderick, London Symphony Orchestra, Richard Farnes

Released in celebration of the Britten anniversary year, this recording captures the critically acclaimed production by Opera North of Britten’s most ingeniously crafted opera, The Turn of the Screw, in 2010, conducted by Richard Farnes, its Music Director, with an all-English cast including Andrew Kennedy, Sally Matthews, and the eleven-year-old Michael Clayton-Jolly in the role of Miles. Farnes was the natural replacement for the originally scheduled Sir Colin Davis, having himself been mentored by the late conductor.

In 1932, on the radio, the eighteen-year-old Britten heard ‘a wonderful, impressive, but terribly eerie and scary play, The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James’. His version of the ghost story, premiered in 1954, is a chamber opera in a prologue and two acts. It tells the story of a Governess and a housekeeper, Mrs Grose, who vow to protect two children, Miles and Flora, from the strange happenings that occur in the grounds of their English country house.