You’ll have to decide what really happens in ‘The Turn of the Screw’

By Peter Alexander April 18, 2019, at 1:30 p.m.

The next production of the University of Colorado Eklund Opera Program, Benjamin Britten’s TheTurn of the Screw, is a Victorian-era ghost story. Whether the ghosts are real or not, however, Eklund Opera director Leigh Holman won’t say.

Photo for CU Presents by Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado

“I want that to be part of the mystery of the piece,” Holman says. “As a stage director I usually stay away from ambiguity, but in this case, I’m not doing that. I want people to leave and have those discussions — was it real?”

Performances will be April 25-28 in the Imig Music Building’s intimate Music Theatre. A cast of graduate and undergraduate students will be accompanied by a 13-piece chamber orchestra of freelance professional musicians, conducted by Jeremy Reger.

Britten’s opera is based on a short story by Henry James, about a governess hired to care for two children living in a remote English country home. Strange things start to happen, beginning when the boy, Miles, is permanently dismissed from his school without clear explanation.

Then the governess starts seeing ghosts, who apparently are Peter Quint, a former servant in the household, and Miss Jessel, the previous governess. She believes the ghosts are trying to lure the children — Miles and his younger sister, Flora — into demonic activities. Whether they are real, or creations of her overheated imagination, is the issue Holman wants the audience to decide for themselves.

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The Turn of the Screw
An opera by Benjamin Britten
Eklund Opera Program, Leigh Holman, director
Jeremy Reger, music director

7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 25–Saturday, April 27
2 p.m. Sunday, April 28
Music Theater, CU Imig Music Building

Tickets