The Turn of the Screw (opera) composer conducting. Described as one of the most dramatically appealing English operas, the opera in two acts has a prologue and sixteen scenes, each preceded by a variation on the twelve-note 'Screw' theme. Typically of Britten, the music mixes tonality and dissonance, with Britten's recurrent use of a twelve-tone figure being perhaps a nod to the approach of Arnold Schoenberg. Thematically, the play gives a central role to a line borrowed from W. B. Yeats' poem "The Second Coming": "The ceremony of innocence is drowned." The opera was given its British premiere on 6 October 1954 by the Sadler's Wells
The Turn of the Screw (2009 film) or "suppurate[d] in evil", found it "never less than absorbing", suspecting this would be particularly so for viewers unfamiliar with the story. "The Daily Telegraph"s Simon Horsford felt that "The Turn of the Screw" "might not work on all levels but it is an unsettling interpretation nonetheless". By contrast, Tom Sutcliffe, writing in "The Independent", was unimpressed with the film, considering James's novel to have been "comprehensively vandalised", while Richard Whittaker, writing in "The Austin Chronicle", felt that the film was "a particular and peculiar misfire" from Welch. "The Turn of the Screw" was chosen as "pick of the day"