The Turn of the Screw (opera)

The Turn of the Screw
Chamber opera by Benjamin Britten
The composer in 1968
Librettist	Myfanwy Piper
Language	English
Based on	The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Premiere	14 September 1954 (1954-09-14) Teatro La Fenice, Venice

The Turn of the Screw is a 20th-century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten with a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, "wife of the artist John Piper, who had been a friend of the composer since 1935 and had provided designs for several of the operas". The libretto is based on the novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. The opera was commissioned by the Venice Biennale and given its world premiere on 14 September 1954, at the Teatro La Fenice, Venice. The original recording was made during that year, with the composer conducting.

Described as one of the most dramatically appealing English operas, the opera in two acts has a prologue and sixteen scenes, each preceded by a variation on the twelve-note 'Screw' theme. Typically of Britten, the music mixes tonality and dissonance, with Britten's recurrent use of a twelve-tone figure being perhaps a nod to the approach of Arnold Schoenberg. Thematically, the play gives a central role to a line borrowed from W. B. Yeats' poem "The Second Coming": "The ceremony of innocence is drowned."

The opera was given its British premiere on 6 October 1954 by the Sadler's Wells Opera in London; the North American premiere on 23 August 1957 at Canada's Stratford Festival with the English Opera Group; the US premiere followed on 19 March 1958 at the New York College of Music. Since then there have been regular performances around the world.

In 2003, English Touring Opera presented the work throughout England and three years later Glyndebourne Touring Opera toured the UK with their new production of the work before reviving it in 2007 at their summer festival, Glyndebourne Festival Opera. In 2008, there were no fewer than 10 productions, in cities as varied as Innsbruck in Austria (at the Tiroler Landestheater); Sacramento, California (at the Sacramento Opera); and St Petersburg at the Mariinsky Theatre. In 2009, seven productions received 22 performances – again ranging from those in major cities (by the English National Opera in London and at the Mariinsky Theater in St Petersburg) to such provincial locations as Portland, Oregon, and Dessau, Germany.