Last year, the Madison Opera Book Club was started in conjunction with our spring production of Faust. A fun discussion took place at the Sequoya Library on the classic “deal with the devil” myth as retold in the book The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant. This year, the Book Club is back to read The Turn of the Screw by Henry James in preparation for our production of Benjamin Britten’s operatic adaptation of the ghostly tale. Anyone can join: just pick up a copy of the text, read it, and come to the Sequoya Library on Saturday, January 16th at 2 p.m., preferably with some things to say!

The novella is short by nature and the chilling tale makes for a quick read. But though the page count is thin, James’ writing is rich. Some of the key questions to consider when reading The Turn of the Screw include:

• Are the ghosts real?
• How reliable is the governess as a narrator?
• What is the nature of the children’s corruption by Quint and Miss Jessel?
• Do they maintain any innocence?

In Claire Seymour’s controversial analysis, The Operas of Benjamin Britten: Expression and Evasion, she discusses potential reasons Britten might have been attracted to the story, based on patterns in his other operas:

• themes of innocence and experience
• battle of good vs. evil, with a morally ambiguous moderator in between
• no moral absolutes, James’ texts offers an “unstable ethical field”
• the novella is “full of emptiness”, literally and metaphorically, which invites a theatrical version to fill in gaps

If you know the text, perhaps you will contend some of these assumptions. But either way, in transferring this particular work to the stage, Britten and his librettist Myfanwy Piper faced numerous difficult decisions right from the start. For one, Britten decided almost immediately that the ghosts were real, and in the opera they are characters with fully articulated words and music, even though they do not speak in the book. Would another interpretation have worked on stage?

This and more, next Saturday, January 16th, at the Sequoya Library meeting room, 2 p.m.

Helpful links:

• Full text of The Turn of the Screw free online
• Audio book of The Turn of the Screw free online
• Buy tickets to The Turn of the Screw, Jan. 28-31 in The Playhouse

Happy 2010! What better news to start the new year than finding Madison Opera on local “Best of” lists for 2009?

Lindsay Christians of 77 Square noted Carmen on her “Best of the arts 2009” list:

I noticed many groups of opera newbies at Madison Opera’s sold-out “Carmen,” a fantastic production featuring Katharine Goeldner in the lead. As an introduction to opera, this production of Georges Bizet’s “Carmen” was a treat, with familiar melodies, passionate characters and a saturated color palette in sets and costumes.

While the leads (including Adam Diegel and Hyung Yun) were uniformly gifted, I was most impressed with Candace Evans’ smoothly integrated direction and the strength of the supporting cast. Madison Opera has set the bar high for future performances, which can only mean good things in 2010.

Marc Eisen of The Isthmus included Madison Opera’s Faust from May in his “Favorite concerts of 2009” column:

I’m a fool when it comes to opera. I love the sound of the music, and that’s pretty much it. The lyrics seldom interest me, and the plots, with their creaky Brady Bunch lameness, can be wincingly bad. (True confession: I fell asleep at the Lyric Opera’s humdrum, zzz-inducing Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci double bill in February.) But, wow, the Faust legend! Now, that’s a story worthy of the Greeks. What can be more primal than a bitter old man trading his soul to the devil for a return to youth and a chance for sex with a young woman, whom he leaves pregnant and abandoned? (Today, we have a pill to facilitate that devilish transaction.)

The plot got me, and so did the cast and staging by director Bernard Uzan. I scribbled in my notes that Mexican tenor David Lomeli, as Faust, is destined for greatness. Bass-baritone David Pittsinger’s Mephistopheles was ominous and unsettling, practically scary. The third act featured a shocking scene of Satan getting the best of a wimpy Christ who steps down from the cross. Bad move, Jesus. I’m surprised Bishop Morlino wasn’t out front picketing.

Opera that makes you think is rare. This was a great night for the Madison Opera.