How about 13 kids being held captive in their house in California for 20 years. Whatever your decision or belief about this story, you are left with the fact that at the end you have one severely damaged child and one dead child. PK: To me the death of art is reductivism. I thought as I was doing it that it was not the way I would do it if I ever directed the show. The former production was fantastically beautiful, very imaginative, but it was obvious from the very beginning that the Governess was out of her mind. If you’re able to say, “That woman is just crazy,” then that’s not a successful production.

I think the ambiguity at the core of this opera ultimately makes it a rewarding journey but no one is complacent at the end. Are all those people crazy? Stupid? Misguided? Or do they just believe differently from you? I don’t have an answer for that.

But it’s very interesting when people say, “Well, is she crazy or not?” Look around at our world and see how some people absolutely believe things they hear on television that you think are completely insane. Some people think Britten, by giving voice to the ghosts, wanted to say of course they’re real. I recently found out doing some research that Britten and Myfanwy Piper both wanted to preserve the ambiguity. Henry James, to the end of his life, maintained the ambiguity. To me it went down the rabbit hole of what can be a problem with productions of this opera-the issue of, is it all in the Governess’s head, are there really ghosts. Peter Kazaras: It was a very interesting production that had premiered at Glimmerglass-inventive, colorful, with a very strong point of view about the Governess, that she was obviously and seriously disturbed, not just anxious.

Seattle opera turn of the screw