Britten: The Turn of the Screw (2-CD)

Composer: Benjamin Britten
Artists: Sally Matthews, Julian Hubbard, Carole Wilson, Giselle Allen, Ed Lyon, Henri de Beauffort, Katharina Bierweiler, La Monnaie Chamber Orchestra
Conductor: Ben Glassberg 
Number of Discs: 2
Label: Alpha
Release Date: April 7, 2022

Nothing is as it appears in the old English manor house of Bly. A new governess takes up her post and discovers that the children who are her new charges are under the influence of the ghosts of the previous governess and her depraved lover. As one disturbing event unfolds after another, the questions become more pressing: What horrors happened here before her arrival? Are the children innocent? Do we really see what we are seeing? 

Based on Henry James’s strange ghost story, Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw is a psychological thriller in the form of a chamber opera. The Orchestre de la Monnaie, under the British conductor Ben Glassberg, took up this masterpiece in a staging which, despite the Covid crisis, received rave reviews. Alpha now presents a version recorded in studio conditions immediately after the performances. The two leading singers, Ed Lyon and Sally Matthews, are utterly convincing. Together they push the audience’s imagination to unbearable levels of tension.

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