“Only make the reader’s general vision of evil intense enough, I said to myself—and that is already a charming job—and his own experience, his own imagination, his own sympathy…will supply him quite sufficiently with all the particulars. Make him think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.” More
“‘Innocence, you have corrupted me.’ The line is Myfanwy Piper’s own, not Yeats’s or James’s, so what did she mean by it? ‘I think that’s about the Governess’s own innocence, that she was a person who was innocent in all her approaches to everything, but she realized that you can’t be innocent, you can’t afford to be innocent, so that her innocence has let her down.” More
“This plan is one of Britten’s most inspired ideas and gives the opera its near-perfection of design and its highly organised intricacy of structure. The tension of the story is maintained and intensified throughout by turns of the musical screw, i.e. by the use of variation form.” More
“When the opera was first performed, homosexuality was virtually a taboo subject and no writer was legally permitted to mention that homosexuality and paedophilia were links in the chain that binds Britten’s music so closely to James’s story.” More
“I just thought it was the right subject for him. I knew he was interested in the effect of adult, or bad ideas on the innocence of children. I also thought it was densely musical prose which would suit his work.” More
"The Innocents," movie version of Henry James’ novel, The Turn of the Screw
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