This terrifying tale is so intense you can feel it in your bones

Director Craig Baldwin was casting around for “something different” to stage at the Hayes Theatre when he hit on an unusual idea.

Musical theatre has long been the stock in trade of the Hayes, but why not present an opera on the intimate stage of the Kings Cross theatre?

Sophie Salvesani, who plays the Governess, and Kanen Breen (Peter Quint). Credit: Maryna Rothe

After some research, Baldwin believes he has hit on the perfect work for the Hayes’ first opera – Benjamin Britten’s classic spine-chiller The Turn of the Screw.

“I started looking at operas that would benefit from being in a really intimate situation,” says Baldwin. “Turn of the Screw came up. I thought, how great to be right next to the spine-chilling music and feel really enveloped by it. Often when it’s done on larger stages, it can feel a bit Grand Guignol and a bit over the top in its horror. And I thought how amazing to be able to be whisper quiet at times, which you can’t do on a giant opera stage.”

Britten wrote The Turn of the Screw in 1954. Based on the Henry James novella of the same name, it has since become one of the most performed of all the English language operas. It tells the story of a young governess, engaged to look after two children in an isolated old manor house, who begins to see the ghosts of two former employees.

“It’s a ghost story at the Hayes in the middle of winter,” says Baldwin. “The audience will be walking into this slightly eerie abandoned theatre. Ghosts will waft their way into the space and start telling you the story of how the ghosts tried to take over this house and these children and what happened when they did.

Julie Lea Goodwin in rehearsals with musical director Francis Greep.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

“It’s a Victorian-era story. It was a very morally repressive time, and the most important thing to Victorians was propriety – seeming moral and on the straight, but they loved ghost stories because it’s a way of breaking out of our known moral boundaries.”

Baldwin has assembled a top-notch cast including Julie Lea Goodwin and Sophie Salvesani, who will alternate in the role of the Governess, and Kanen Breen and Ben Rasheed sharing the role of ghostly Peter Quint.

The two children are represented by a pair of very creepy dolls (sung by Addy Robertson and Sandy Leung).

“These ghosts have come to tell you a story in an abandoned theatre and picked whatever is at hand to tell that story,” says Baldwin. “There happens to be a doll house on stage and that becomes the house they’re talking about and there happens to be these dolls that become the children and are manipulated by the ghosts to tell the story of the children.”

The Turn of the Screw will be Julie Lea Goodwin’s first Britten opera. More used to the expanse of stages such as the Joan Sutherland Theatre, she is looking forward to singing in such a small space.

“It’s going to be a big change,” she says. “It’s such an intimate space, which has a nice feel for something that it really is a play set to music.

“It’s going to be an interesting experience for the audience, too, because the few times that I have sung in an intimate space people actually feel your voice in their body.”

Baldwin says he is hoping to attract plenty of opera first-timers to the production, so the fact it is sung in English was a big factor in his choice.

“A lot of people feel intimidated by going to opera and not understanding the language they’re singing in having to read surtitles. I want to make the case that opera is drama and that’s what Britten does so well. The scenes could be dramatic scenes from a play in terms of the way the language works.”

The Turn of The Screw, Hayes Theatre, until September 15

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