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 Sense of an Ending It is perhaps his greatest achievement that, in his hands, the unknowable does not mean the implausible." "The Guardian's" Justine Jordan said "With its patterns and repetitions, scrutinising its own workings from every possible angle, the novella becomes a highly wrought meditation on ageing, memory and regret." Boyd Tonkin from "The Independent" said "The Sense of an Ending" is "A slow burn, measured but suspenseful, this compact novel makes every slyly crafted sentence count." Anita Brookner, writing for "The Daily Telegraph", said the novel is not a thriller, but a tragedy, which resembles Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw".