Helen Donath

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…

Karl Richter conducts Peter Schreier, Ernst Gerold Schramm, Siegmund Nimsgern, Helen Donath, Julia Hamari, Horst R. Laubenthal, Walter Berry, and Muenchner Bach Chor & Orchestra in 1971.

There are elements of Eurotrash in this outdoor Aix-en-Provence summer opera production. Nevertheless, the splendid singing and acting transform the story, normally treated as farce, into something considerably more serious. As many other critics have noted, the young lovers have not yet sorted everything out as this performance ends. Act One begins with the principal characters running around in the outdoor theater -- while the audience takes it in as if they had been advised to sit back and enjoy the novelty. Very likely they were also asked to refrain from applauding at the end of arias and ensemble pieces, in which the three-hour opera abounds.

Karl Richter conducts Bach's Johannes-Passion with the Muenchner Bach Chor & Orchestra.