By William R. Wineke
Special to Channel 3000

Madison Opera opened a four-performance production of Benjamin Britten's "The Turn of the Screw" Thursday night in the Overture Center's Playhouse and proved conclusively the company knows how to mount a big production on a small stage.

This is the first time the Opera has used the 337-seat Playhouse, a venue once the home of the Madison Repertory Theatre. It features a "thrust" stage that sticks out into the audience -- much like a theater-in-the-round and virtually every seat is only a short distance from the singers. That makes quite a change for a company accustomed to performing in the 2,000-plus seat Overture Hall.

The company pulled it off brilliantly. "The Turn of the Screw" was one of the best Madison Opera productions in years -- and that group does a pretty good job of putting on opera. The story comes from a Henry James 1898 novella of the same title and was adapted for opera by Britten in 1954. The story involves a young governess who is hired to care for two children on a remote country estate. The governess meets the children, Flora and Miles, and determines they are being influenced by the ghosts of Peter Quint, a valet who seems to have abused the children before his death, and Miss Jessel, a previous governess who died after being forced off the estate.

The opera is, on one hand, a classic ghost story but, by the time it ends, the audience isn't sure whether the ghosts are real or whether they are a figment of the governess's madness.

So it is a complicated opera, one made more difficult by the fact that winter-season operas have small budgets and this one has a small stage. The opera features no fewer than 17 scene changes -- so a lot has to be done with a little in terms of scenery. The production handles this with a series of gauze curtain-panels that change shape and with some creative lighting. It all works and it doesn't take the audience long to buy into the setting.

But what really makes "The Turn of the Screw" a knockout production is the performance of the youth leads.

Jennifer DeMain, a senior at Edgewood High School, sings the role of Flora and Alistair Sewell , an eighth-grade student at Jefferson Middle School, sings the role of Miles.

Which seems a might suspicious in the beginning. Those are familiar names. Jennifer is the daughter of John DeMain, music director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra (and of the Madison Opera) and Alistair Sewell is the son of Andre Sewell, music director of the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. Their parents say they had nothing to do with the talent competition but, still …

By the opera's end (there is no curtain at the Playhouse, so the opera just ends), no one was saying "but, still … "

They were each magnificent and would have been equally magnificent had their last names been Jones or Smith. Sewell, who has the more dramatic role (he dies in the end), has a particular gift for acting. You can teach technique but you can't teach charisma. From the minute he stepped on stage, he had the audience with him.

And the beauty of the Playhouse is that the audience could be with him. We were all just a few feet from the stage.

Caroline Worra, a Metropolitan Opera and New York City Opera star, played the role of the governess and her voice was more than equal to the tests of Britten's demanding score. Julia Faulkner, an assistant professor of voice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, sang the role of Mrs. Grose, housekeeper at the estate. Gregory Schmidt, a local singer with a national reputation, sang Peter Quint and Jamie Van Eyck, seen previously in Madison in "Madama Butterfly" and "Carmen," sang the role of Miss Jessel.

In a just world, each would receive more space; but the kids stole the show. Sorry about that.

"The Turn of the Screw" will be performed again Friday night and Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 2:30 p.m.

Each performance is sold out. My advice if you don't have tickets: Find a scalper.