"It is a curious tale. I have it written in faded ink, a woman's hand, governess to two children, long ago..." So begins Benjamin Britten's operatic re-imagining of Henry James's ghostly chiller The Turn of the Screw. Oscar Wilde called it "a most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale" but how are we supposed to interpret it? In a remote country house, a governess fights to protect two children from menacing spirits. But are these spirits real or imagined?

Are they figments of a fevered imagination? Did evil really occur at Bly before the governess's arrival and, if so, what? So many questions, so many or so few answers. Opera North's new staging is the work of a fresh young creative team eager to find its own way to the heart of James's psychological thriller. Director Alessandro Talevi talks about his approach to this perennially challenging masterpiece. How many dark secrets shall be revealed; how many forever hidden?

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The Howard Assembly Room is no longer Opera North's best-kept secret. Now in its second jam-packed year, it has truly come of age and its slogan, "Making connections between the classical and the contemporary", was never more amply demonstrated than in the coming 2010/11 season. Dominic Gray discusses some intriguing cross-fertilisation between the main stage and this beautiful and dynamic space.

He outlines the thinking behind "Back to the Woods: Songs and Stories from the Heart of Europe" and "Don't Breathe" - a series of spooky events tied in to the main-house staging of Britten's The Turn of the Screw - and he welcomes some diverse and illustrious "headliners", from Iron and Wine (Sam Beam) to the German star mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager, from the Mercury Prize-nominated Basquiat Strings to the internationally acclaimed British pianist Paul Lewis, whose recent Proms exposition of the Beethoven piano concertos proved so very special.

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