The Boston Conservatory's production of Benjamin Britten's chamber opera "The Turn of the Screw," which opened a four-performance run on Thursday, is so good you want to see it again, right away. That is saying a lot, because this is a nightmarish story with dark Freudian swirls, and a musical score that challenges cast and orchestra to the maximum. Just to do it well would be a magnificent accomplishment, and this is better than that.
The singers on the first night - all but one Boston Conservatory students - moved and sang well, and projected the text vividly. The staging, by faculty member Kirsten Z. Cairns, with set designs by Peter Waldron, has a few surprises to keep your attention but generally clarifies and underlines the action, so that the mysteries that linger are courtesy of Britten and Henry James (and Freud).
Based on James's 1898 novella, the opera's story tells of a young governess who arrives at an English country house to take charge of two orphaned children. She has been hired by the children's distant guardian-uncle, who is happy to have them sealed away. When she discovers that the boy, Miles, has been kicked out of school, she decides to keep the news from the uncle. Her indulgence suggests a desire for intimacy, and is followed by the arrival of a ghostly duo, Peter Quint (who had charge of the household before his death) and her predecessor as governess, Miss Jessel. Are they figments of her mind? Or more than that? Did Quint "make free" with Miles, as the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, suggests? Is the governess herself a threat to the children's innocence, in her conventionality, credulity, and emotional hunger? It wouldn't be much of a ghost story if the answer were clear.
Britten and librettist Myfanwy Piper added even more ambiguities to James's story. James's ghosts are quiet and invisible; Britten's are neither, and eventually dominate the scene, visually and musically. Quint, moreover, has the score's most beautiful music, often in the pentatonic scale (at once familiar and exotic), and accompanied by celesta and harp. Quint's self-description suggests not an inclination to sexual abuse, but to the exotic and unexplored ("I am all things strange and bold"). Perhaps Quint and Miles made up an imaginary world of their own. Does the governess' pressuring of Miles to disown Quint actually cost Miles something precious - the genius that is reflected in his riffing on a Beethoven piano sonata in the second act? The piano recalls Quint's celesta and suggests Miles's playing is, in some sense, a reflection of Quint's influence.
Is the search for identity destructive? Is all love oppressive? Only an opera, with its combination of text and music, could pose such questions in a tantalizingly open-ended way.
Audra Faust has a light soubrette voice that was a bit taxed in the governess' plentiful and often difficult music, but she was always true and accurate, and she acted the part beautifully, with many subtle gestures that suggested inward emotional reactions. Tara Curtis as Mrs. Grose looked the part and sang firmly, but didn't suggest the woman's fretful conventionality. Stephen Chambers sang Quint with a magnificent power, choirboy purity, and breathtaking precision. As Miss Jessel, Lesley Friend displayed a huge voice and fearsome presence, as required. Miles was well sung by young Jake Wilder-Smith. Chelsea Beatty was a bit mature for Flora, the orphan girl.
The 13-piece orchestra was led by Karl Paulnack, with fluid piano and celesta turns by Rasa Vitkauskaite. The lighting by Jeff Adelberg varied little according to the mood and the action - the only weakness in a splendidly horrifying evening.
