Myfanwy Piper

Benjamin Britten’s opera of the Henry James novel. An inexperienced governess is sent to a country house to care for two children, whom she is gradually convinced have been corrupted by the ghosts of a previous manservant and governess…

A staging of Britten's opera filmed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice in June 2008.

Margaret Williams directs this 2001 production of adaptation of Benjamin Britten's television opera based on a short story by Henry James. Performers featured include Gerald Finley, Peter Savidge and Josephine Barstow. The conductor is Kent Nagano. As pertinent now as then, OWEN WINGRAVE was composed by Benjamin Britten at the height of the Vietnam War. The opera poses the question: Is pacifism an act of cowardice? Or rather a desire to escape from the spiral of war and create world peace? To what extent do we determine our own futures? Should we let past events inform the decisions we make? Britten’s characters grapple with timeless issues in this gripping psychodrama.

Gustav Von Aschenbach, a passionate composer, arrives in Venice as a result of wanderlust and there meets a young man by whose beauty he becomes obsessed.

A new governess arrives at a country house to take care of two seemingly angelic young children. But she begins to suspect that the house is haunted, and that the ghosts mean harm to the children.

Britten's last opera, in two acts, presented by Teatro Real.

Louisa Muller makes her Garsington directing debut and we welcome back Richard Farnes (Falstaff, 2018) to conduct with Sophie Bevan (Don Giovanni, 2012) as the Governess and British tenor Ed Lyon making his Garsington debut as Quint. A young governess is sent to a remote country house to care for two children. She becomes increasingly disturbed by their behaviour but is under strict instruction never to bother their guardian in London. Are they innocent or wicked, possessed or just high-spirited?

At the English National Opera, Deborah Warner has been directing Benjamin Britten's final opera, Death in Venice, conducted by Edward Gardner.