I suppose having an adult play Miles does overcome various matters of taste people might be squeamish about if a boy sings him. It gives the director more freedom. All the same, it seems a bit like cheating to me, though she is very good, I must admit. You imply rather that you didn't know she was female at first ("as it turned out").

I didn't read the Henry James until after I'd seen the opera, which certainly didn't spoil my enjoyment of the opera - don't know what it would have been like the other way round. Piper/Britten's version has scenes that aren't in the book, but are very telling in the theatre. It's more important to read the libretto and listen to the recording, and accept that although it is based on the story, it's different, though not nearly as different as Grimes is from Crabbe.

One thing is certain - the Coli is really too big to do the opera justice. I've never seen it in a small theatre, but I'd love to.

Did you never see the Jonathan Miller production at the Colly, Mary? There was a lozenge shape false stage which projected out over the pit, so most of the action was very close to the audience, although the scrim enclosing the playing space suggested a vast house stretching out behind. The other two occasions on which I saw it live were both at the old Wells, the second being an EOG performance; Pears/Catherine Wilson/Sylvia Fisher cond. Britten.

Don B:
I agree with Mary: it's such a tightly constructed, fast moving piece that knowing it well before you see it will help you enjoy it all the more. The original recording is an absolute scorcher, too.

Sorry, Mary, should have answered this earlier: there were two performers listed for Miles, one a local lad, and the other this Belgian girl: according to the schedule, it was to have been the boy, and since there was a girl the spitting image of the photograph in the programme sitting around the circle from me, I assumed that it was the alternative who was watching. It was a very knowing performance for a child, though this was an older-looking Miles than we're used to; into his teens rather than the little angel; if I remember correctly the other Miles was that same age in real life, and a head chorister somewhere, according to his biog. I mentioned before the extraordinary moment at the end of the Bell scene after his last words ("Does my uncle think what you think?") when before his exit, he stared the Governess straight in the face, kissed the tip of his index finger and laid it gently on her forehead before running it lightly down her nose until it rested on her lips as an admonition of silence before he moved away offstage to join the others. The Governess's next lines ("It was a challenge!/He knows what I know, and dares me to act...") seemed more pertinent than ever.

In the clip you can also see one of the screens which had projected images and clips on: in this case the eyes of Quint are watching. It's also possible to see from the costumes that the action has been moved to somewhere in the first half of the twentieth century, perhaps around the late thirties/early forties, but this is one of those cases where it makes as much sense as the Victorian or Edwardian period more normally associated with the work.