Britten, Opera and Film: Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw from Stage to Screen . By Peter Auker

When it comes to opera, the term ‘cinematic’ has been used as both a form of praise and an admonition. Early twentieth-century critics marvelled at how the new medium of film had inspired a visual, faster-paced style of opera on stage, while warning that opera may lose its essential character in becoming too much like film. Scholars have generally been more positive in their assessments, seeing the relationship between film and opera as a two-way street: research has shown how early cinema partook of operatic models, how operas have been adapted on film, and how operatic music has formed the basis for movie soundtracks. But the question of what it means for a newly composed opera to be cinematic—and how this may be located in its music, libretto, and staging—has continued to be a topic of debate. Peter Auker’s study is the latest book to wrestle with this question, arguing that previous discussions lacked the ‘systematically assembled evidence’ needed to pin down the cinematic essence of Britten’s operas (3).