With the Waterperry Opera Festival returning and in full swing, I took my eldest daughter along for Peter and the Wolf, Sergei Prokofiev’s masterful introduction to classical music, here with translations from Natalya Sats. The story of Peter and the Wolf is simple: a young boy witnessing several animals in the farm that surrounds him, and also a wolf that he sets out to stop eating said animals.

The brilliance of Prokofiev’s work is that it weaves different instruments into its score, establishing at the start that each represents a different figure in the piece – the wolf, the duck, the cat etc. It’s a great way to sneak learning in, adding personification to different sounds.

The production enhances this with our storytellers, who perform with wit and charm. Ben Maddison and Lizzie Buckingham move in and around the space this is performed in, switching between different characters and also a narrator. The production uses modest props and costumes effectively, so as not to impact proceedings; a hand puppet for the duck, a pair of paws for the cat and so on. Most impressive were the eyes and ears for the wolves that, when married to the storyteller's own performance, conjured a presence that managed to be intimidating with very little.

You get the sense that this is a passion project for the festival. The piece’s director, Guy Verrall-Withers, is the festival’s artistic director; its conductor, Bertie Baigent, the festival’s music director. And there is something admirable in finding the time in the festival’s programme for this show. It is a perfect introduction to classic music. You are probably all familiar with Prokofiev’s score, but to hear it performed so beautifully in the resplendent surroundings of the Waterperry Gardens is a treat that will surely charm all. And you can take in the rest of the gardens once the show has finished, which just about justifies a cost that is on the higher end of the spectrum for family fun.

I took my 8 year-old daughter to watch the performance and her views are that it was:

“A really good show, everyone worked really hard. I liked the music and the story. My favourite characters were the wolf and the grandfather and I liked how they created each animal. It was good that there was a happy ending. I particularly liked the sunglasses for the hunters. We went for cake afterwards and I had a delicious cream and jam scone, which I had the Cornish way.”

A perfect summer’s evening at Waterperry’s celebrated gardens began in sunshine: all bees and butterflies, ornamental ponds and heady herbaceous beds; but as the shadows lengthened, a totally different atmosphere was evoked.

Taking their seats in the packed outdoor amphitheatre, the audience gazed expectantly up at the orchestra perched above them atop a stone wall, black drapes obscuring two dimly lit alcoves below, flanking a mysterious tunnel. All around, the tree leaves rustled, the high hedges darkened and the gaps between softened by twilight, became gradually indistinct.

The audience looked to the stage, both open to and enclosed by nature. What followed thrilled and enthralled, until the last pizzicato notes faded, and the spell was broken.

Waterperry Opera Festival’s first performance of Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw did just that: under Rebecca Meltzer’s assured and imaginative direction it remorselessly ratcheted up the tension, twisting and taunting, never fully revealing. Henry James’ original ghost story of a young governess, inexperienced and isolated at Bly, an unfamiliar country house with two young charges whom, she comes to believe, are demonically possessed by dead servants, is a masterpiece of suggestibility.

Britten’s dark and evocative score succeeds in evoking mystery and wonder, while remaining highly structured. Variations on a twelve-note theme recur throughout, like a fleeting portal into another world, while conductor Bertie Baigent’s sparkling command of a small orchestra which included a harpist, and a percussionist who alone played a variety of drums, tubular bells, a glockenspiel, triangle, cymbal and gong, delighted and disturbed in its tonality and dissonance.

Robin Bailey’s Prologue/Quint’s seductive tenor voice had a beautiful, rounded timbre which brought conviction to his role as seducer and bully by stealth. He moved with lithe athleticism, in which force was barely concealed. Soprano Charlotte Bowden’s bell-like clarity, poise and equanimity is rapidly shredded by Quint’s menacing presence, her hair unravelling as her mind becomes more confused. Georgia Mae Ellis’s mezzo soprano had a gorgeous voluptuous velvet quality to her delivery, and when she impulsively kisses the Governess on the cheek, a cross current of regressive sexuality which criss-crosses the plot is glimpsed, but not understood.

Sian Dicker’s tightly black-clad Miss Jessel, the Governess’ well-born predecessor recoils at Quint’s advances, but despite the expressive fullness of her lovely phrasing, she fails to stop him slowly and deliberately loosening the fastenings at her throat, a familiar action, unwillingly, hopelessly unresisted. With Bly’s owner absent, his valet Quint knows no bounds.

The duet between Quint and Miss Jessel, ‘The ceremony of innocence is drowned’, lines from W.B. Yeat’s ‘Second Coming’ ominously anticipates disaster. When the contents of the two alcoves are revealed in April Dalton’s atmospheric set, the Governess’ worst fears appear to be confirmed.

Britten’s demanding writing for the parts of Flora and Miles poses a significant challenge. Beth Burdge’s confident Flora combined innocence with determination; her impassioned cries of "I hate you" finally convincing Mrs Grose to leave Bly with her, releasing one child from the Governess’ increasingly erratic authority. Ivo Clark’s Milo combined pellucid treble tones with anguished contradiction. Torn between Quint’s coercive loyalty, and the Governess’ impassioned pleas, he cannot live. Instead of escape, he is trapped. "Peter Quint, you devil!", he screams. His heart, finally, is rent between them.