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) "The Turn of the Screw". The children, Flora and Miles, were played respectively by Eva Sayer and Josef Lindsay. However, due to the sexual content of the film, the child actors did not attend the preview screenings. "The Turn of the Screw" was first shown at 9 pm on BBC One on 30 December 2009, as part of the BBC's Christmas 2009 season. It has since been broadcast on other BBC channels and on Drama. In the UK, the film was released on DVD on 1 March 2010, and distributed by Acorn Media UK. The DVD was rated "15" by