It has taken 48 years for The Turn of the Screw to reach the Royal Opera House; for what is arguably Britten's greatest stage work (only Billy Budd runs it close), that is an unforgivably long time.
Deborah Warner's production, first seen at the Barbican Theatre in 1997, was one of the few highlights of the Royal Opera's hapless wanderings while the Covent Garden house was renovated.
At the Barbican, the design by Tom Pye and Jean Kalman, more like an environment than a set, seemed so intimately tailored to that specific space that its transfer to the much larger ROH stage promised to be problematic. Yet a few minutes of last night's revival were enough to dispel any fears - with a cast largely retained from that first run, the impact is as powerful as before, with the sureness of the production and performances if anything enhanced.
There is no doubt The Turn of the Screw is the most perplexing of Britten's works, with the ambiguities brought from the Henry James novella deepened and made more complex. But while it is a profoundly creepy piece, it is never an intensely moving one. This is as fine a performance as anyone is likely to encounter, but you still marvel at the perfection of Britten's dramatic invention rather than get caught up in the fates of any of the characters.
It might help, I suppose, to believe in ghosts, and Warner's production certainly gives them real substance - Quint is there monitoring everything, and dashes a vase of flowers to the ground to signal his presence; Miss Jessel is a more shadowy presence. There's no suggestion the governess is hallucinating, that the whole thing is a product of her hysteria; the dangers are real enough, though whether she deals with them sensibly is another matter.
Joan Rodgers is once again the governess, beautifully catching the conflicting pulls of duty, loyalty, and terrified foreboding. Ian Bostridge is the honey-toned Quint, Vivien Tierney the pathetic Miss Jessel, and Jane Henschel the rather sinister housekeeper Mrs Grose. All are superb.
The children, Julian Leang (Miles) and Caroline Wise (Flora), are new for the revival but fit in effortlessly, while Daniel Harding conducts a fleet, energised account of the score which never presses too hard and revels in all the textural detail.
A superb achievement again, with extra congratulations to Warner and Harding for resisting the surtitles that the ROH seems determined to inflict even on English- language shows. The words come across perfectly, without any distractions.
· Until January 16. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
