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Spring 2010 Courses War Stories San Juan Study Tour The Turn of the Screw American Poetry Congress Now & After Josie De Guzman New Visions/ Directions Vernacular in Contemporary Design

Discover "...the Hidden Life that Stirs When the Candle is Out" The Turn of the Screw - Written by James, Interpreted by Britten Two Tuesdays, January 12 and 19, 6:00–7:30 P.M. Private residences, addresses will be provided to subscribers One Wednesday, January 27, 6:30 P.M. Brown Theater, Wortham Center LIMITED ENROLLMENT Henry James himself referred to The Turn of the Screw as “a fairy tale pure and simple.” This archetypal conflict between the universal realities of good versus evil and natural versus supernatural in James’s novella attracted the attention of the composer most prepared to set such psychic storms to music: Benjamin Britten. The story lends itself to Britten’s gif for apt and distinctive musical characterization—the relatively pure, uncomplicated music for the opera’s mere mortals, and the other-worldly music composed for the ghosts. January 12: Caroline Levander, professor of English at Rice University, will discuss this controversial and hotly debated novella published in 1898. January 19: Colin Ure, dramaturg of the Houston Grand Opera, will examine the creative process behind Benjamin Britten’s opera and describe the transformation of Henry James’s novella to the modern operatic stage. January 27: Participants will attend a working dress rehearsal of HGO’s production of The Turn of the Screw, the penultimate practice before the opera opens at the Wortham Theater. Following the rehearsal, we will be invited for an exclusive onstage and backstage tour of the set, designed especially for this HGO production. Caroline Levander is the Carlson Professor in the Humanities, Professor of English, and Director of the Humanities Research Center at Rice University. She is currently writing Laying Claim: Imagining Empire on the U.S. Mexico Border (under contract, Oxford University Press) and Where Is American Literature? (for Wiley-Blackwell’s Manifesto Series), and co-editing Teaching and Studying the Americas (Palgrave Macmillan) and A Companion to American Literary Studies (Blackwell). She is author of Cradle of Liberty: Race, the Child and National Belonging from Thomas Jefferson to W.E.B. Du Bois (Duke University, 2006) and Voices of the Nation: Women and Public Speech in Nineteenth-Century American Culture and Literature (Cambridge University Press 1998 and reprinted 2009) as well as co-editor of Hemispheric American Studies (Rutgers University Press, 2008) and The American Child: A Cultural Studies Reader (Rutgers University Press, 2003). Professor Levander is co-editor of a book series, Imagining the Americas, co-founder of the Americas Colloquium at Rice University and developed the Rice Americas Archive. Scottish-born Colin Ure studied singing at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. Following graduation he studied in Aldeburgh with the tenor Peter Pears, the life-long partner of Benjamin Britten. Prior to his appointment as Houston Grand Opera’s dramaturg in 2006, Mr. Ure was a classical singer and artist manager with several classical agencies in the United Kingdom. Links to sites outside of The Houston Seminar are not under their control and The Houston Seminar is not responsible for the information or links you may find there.  The presence of the link is not intended to imply The Houston Seminar endorsement.