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
William Archibald (playwright) the choreographer Charles Weidman: a verse accompaniment for "On My Mother's Side". He also wrote the text for José Limón's "War Lyrics". In 1945, Archibald wrote the book and lyrics for "Carib Song", which was staged at the Adelphi Theatre with choreography by Katherine Dunham and a score by Baldwin Bergersen. Archibald then went on to write another musical, three plays and the libretto for a ballet opera: "Bay Harbour". His first play, "The Innocents", based on the Henry James novella "The Turn of the Screw", opened on Broadway in 1950. With Truman Capote he wrote the screenplay for the