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Behind the Scenes: John Wilson and OperaGlass Works

John Wilson and Opera Glassworks

John Wilson and OperaGlass Works

BBC Radio 4 - Behind the Scenes, John Wilson and OperaGlass Works

Conductor John Wilson tackles a Britten opera under lockdown in a Victorian music hall.

In March, the conductor John Wilson was rehearsing Britten’s Turn of the Screw when lockdown happened. Undaunted, the performance became a film, produced under Covid conditions.

The conductor John Wilson made his name restoring the historical scores of great Hollywood musicals.  With The John Wilson Orchestra, he has been a fixture at the Proms for over a decade.

In March this year he was at Wilton’s Music Hall in London, rehearsing Benjamin Britten’s Turn of The Screw for OperaGlass Works, when lockdown happened.  All the tickets had been sold, the costumes were ready, the set was in place and the curtain about to go up.  Then the production came to a crashing halt.

There was too much to lose, and this programme tells the story of how, months later, the  opera was re-conceived, reimagined and rescheduled under the new restrictions we are all learning to live in.  The producers of OperaGlass Works, Selina Cadell and Eliza Thompson, decided to turn the staged production into a film. Together with John Wilson and the team they embarked on a challenging journey.  Wilton’s is the perfect Victorian venue for this unsettling and ambiguous ghost story about the corruption of innocence. 

In October the singers came together again, only this time also with a film crew.

Covid restrictions meant the singers and musicians had to be recorded separately and in the most unorthodox ways.   We hear day by day what it was like being on set, how John worked in this ‘topsy turvy’ world as he described it, giving the singers the flexibility to interpret the opera and then later conducting the musicians having to fit round their recorded performances. 

 ‘I do believe in making music for the joy of it’ John says, ‘and we’re experiencing heightened levels of appreciation at the moment because it’s been taken away from us.’ 


Produced by Anna Horsbrugh-Porter
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4

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