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 Voyage (opera) The Voyage (opera) The Voyage is an opera in three acts (plus a prologue and an epilogue) by the American composer Philip Glass. The English/Latin/Spanish libretto was written by David Henry Hwang. The work was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, and first performed there on October 12, 1992 (that date being the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus discovering the Americas). The British premiere was in Leeds, England, performed by The City Of Leeds Youth Opera, with Johnathon Cliff and Mike Williamson as the directors, with Richard Pascoe playing Columbus. Glass did not want to create a biographical