However, three people became inspired by what Chase had produced –– the head of the Washington Opera, Hobart Spaulding and directors Frank Corsaro and Richard Perlman. The production surprised critics though many dismissed film as a gimmick that was distracting. The opera’s scenes were divided by musical interludes, which allowed films to set the mood of each new scene. Thus the players played behind a transparent scrim (on which images and film were projected) sandwiched between screens with images behind them.

Chase had come up with a format that used multiple projections from front projectors to create a single image, and others simultaneously on a rear projection screen from the back of the stage. Turn of the Screw opened in a drafty Lisner auditorium in the fall of 1969. He was given permission to do what he wished. Chase was struggling to complete his first short film, Fragments, and anxious to have funds to finish it, agreed to design the opera only if he could use film. At the very same time Richard Perlman, the director of the Washington Opera Society had approached San Francisco artist/sculptor/filmmaker Ronald Chase to design a production of Britten’s Turn of the Screw.

The filmmakers Emil Ardilino and Gordon Compton then were asked by the renegade opera director, Frank Corsaro, to try something similar for his production of Janecek’s The Markropolous Case at the New York City Opera. a film sequence was projected at the back of the stage while dancers interacted against the images. One of the first uses of a filmed sequence in American theater appeared in 1968 for the Robert Joffrey Ballet.

Two productions in opera, both appearing in different cities in 1968-69, introduced the use of film & projection in American opera. The innovator of film and projection іn American Opera

Seattle opera turn of the screw