Based on Henry James' classic ghost story, Benjamin Britten's masterpiece is a compact and chilling tale of the supernatural, and one of the greatest operas of the twentieth century. Northern Ireland Opera's critically acclaimed 2012 production toured Ireland and to the Buxton Festival in England with great success.

Oliver Mears, stage director: “What the opera does say, however, is elusive – so close is it to the personality of its composer and the spirit of its original source.
Henry James’s 1897 novella is a classic example of authorial ambiguity, and for decades has exercised literary critics of every stripe (Freudian, Marxist, Structuralist…) with its narrative lacunae and finally unanswerable question – are the ghosts real? Do the apparitions (neither James nor the Governess ever call them ‘ghosts’) exist, or are they products of the Governess’s overheated imagination and apparent mental disintegration? But it seems unlikely Britten was much interested in the supernatural as such, or in startling an audience with grand guignol-style ghost schlock. As ever his preoccupations seem more personal and psychological.”