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 Black Spider (opera) Transylvanian, in others more sinister, while the “spider” music enables the orchestra share the limelight with the singers. Judith Weir attended the premiere on February 8, 2009. The "Hamburg" Version has been subsequently performed in Bonn (2010), Regensburg (2011) and Dortmund (2014). The Black Spider (opera) The Black Spider is an opera in three acts by Judith Weir with a libretto by the composer. The work is loosely based on the 1842 novella "Die schwarze Spinne" by Jeremias Gotthelf. Norman Platt, director of Kent Opera, described how his finance director Robin Jessel lent him a recording of "King Harald's Saga"