Nothing is what it seems in an old English manor. When a new governess arrives, the children entrusted to her care seem to receive visits from the ghosts. What horrors occurred here before her arrival? Are the children innocent? Can we really trust what we see? Based on a ghost story by Henry James, Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw is a psychological thriller in chamber opera format.

Finding the right librettos was not easy, but one month after the end of the First World War, his triptych – the grim tragedy Il tabarro, the lyrical and sensitive Suor Angelica, and the comedy Gianni Schicchi – premiered in New York. Three different eras, three different settings, three different ‘colours’; though for Puccini, it is through the contrasts between them that the unity of the work is revealed. For his second time directing at La Monnaie, Tobias Kratzer preserves the original order of the pieces, while weaving them together to form a narrative whole, like a circle with no end. With a cast of artists from the extended La Monnaie family, Alain Altinoglu is the ideal conductor to meet the daunting challenges posed by this triptych.