Benjamin Britten's opera based on Henry James' eerie ghost story "The Turn of the Screw" is no operatic walk in the park. Undaunted, the members of the Seattle Opera Young Artists Program are slated for six performances of Britten's difficult work by two completely different casts.
Director Peter Kazaras and conductor Dean Williamson, who both have hefty track records with Seattle Opera, are guiding the spooky tale of a governess watching over two children at an English country estate while their guardian is away. The production is also benefiting from youthful singers who already have mainstage experience, plus several returning members of the Young Artists Program.
Three members of the same cast - Sarah Heltzel, Maureen McKay and Wesley Edwin Rogers - sat down together to talk to the News. The trio is among 12 singers between the ages of 21 and 30 chosen through national auditions for intensive study over 20 weeks, culminating in the performance of a full-fledged opera. Graduates of the program have gone on to perform for such respected companies as the Metropolitan Opera in New York and La Scala in Milan, Italy.
As alumni of the 2004-05 Young Artists Program, Maureen McKay and Sarah Heltzel see major advantages to being returnees.
"It's good to be around the same coaches for two years in a row," McKay said. "They can see our progress, what we're doing right, what we're not. You feel like you can really plant your feet on the ground and grow."
A bevy of different instructors teach the students.
"We can glean different elements of style from them, which is what we need to step up to the next level," said Heltzel, seen on Seattle Opera's mainstage in 2005 as the Valkyrie Siegrune in Wagner's "Ring des Nibelungen."
McKay pointed out that instruction extends beyond music skills to language, movement and creating believable characters - tools that help transform the students into complete performers who can act as well as sing.
Wesley Edwin Rogers has entered his first year with the program, even though he has appeared on the Seattle Opera mainstage - Maintop in Britten's "Billy Budd," the Fourth Jew in Strauss' "Salome" and Trin in Puccini's "Fanciulla del West." "My roles on the mainstage were all smaller, character-type roles, which has been a great experience for me. But I had a feeling inside that I wasn't a finished product."
The three singers are impressed by Britten's music while acknowledging its hurdles.
"There is so much happening in the orchestral interludes, so much communicated and so much furthering of the story through the orchestration, that it's like a character of its own," Heltzel said.
McKay finds "The Turn of the Screw" demands a particular kind of concentration. "You can't listen to what's going on around you on stage," he said. "There are many sections where it sounds like a circus, it's atonal, there's no beat. You might have two different meters going on at the same time. You have to watch the conductor."
In singing the role of Flora, McKay said she isn't actually trying to sound or act like a child. "When we try to act like children, it doesn't work. It's strange that Flora talks to her puppet a lot and conjures images of her dead governess, but those aren't bizarre to her. You have to tap into making it real."
For Heltzel, a significant stumbling block in playing the ghost of the governess, Miss Jessel, is the fact she isn't alive. "How do I change if I'm a ghost? It's a challenge for me to feel I have desires I'm trying to fulfill, and that's the only arc I can have."
Rogers interprets his character, the ghost Peter Quint, as a human being driven by need rather than as an evil spirit. "We've all seen shows where they say you two guys are bad, you're all evil. I can see, at one time, these ghosts were real people."
Skirting reality as closely as possible makes for the scariest ghost story, and these singers are certainly angling for that in the roles they're performing in "The Turn of the Screw."
Freelance writer Maggie Larrick lives in the Seattle area and is the former editor of the News.
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