Mansfield Park (2017)
(Version of the Chamber Opera with 13 Players)

Setting Jane Austen’s classic novel as an opera, Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park was originally written for 10 singers and a piano played in duet. This version, orchestrated by the composer for an ensemble of 13 players, was first produced by the Grange Festival in 2017. Dove adapted the novel with librettist Alasdair Middleton, and from the first sung words by the whole company, “Mansfield Park, Chapter One”, there is strong narrative drive, impeccable vocal writing and wonderful ensembles that sparkle with style and wit.

Synopsis

Act 1 Chapter One: The Bertrams Observed. In which we meet the inhabitants of Mansfield Park.

Chapter Two: First Impressions. In which we discover that Miss Mary Crawford has twenty thousand pounds and that Mr Henry Crawford is not handsome.

Chapter Three: Sir Thomas Bertram's Farewell In which Sir Thomas Bertram leaves for Antigua.

Chapter Four: Landscape Gardening In which Mr Rushworth proposes a trip to Sotherton, his estate.

Chapter Five: In the Wilderness In which the estate is explored.

Chapter Six: Music and Astronomy In which songs are sung and stars observed.

Chapter Seven: Lovers' Vows In which Amateur Theatricals are undertaken.

Chapter Eight: Persuasion In which Edmund's resolution is tested.

Chapter Nine: The Rehearsal Interrupted In which Sir Thomas returns.

Chapter Ten: Independence and Splendour, Or Twelve Thousand a Year In which happiness is defined.

Chapter Eleven. A View of a Wedding, seen from the Shrubbery at Mansfield Park In which a wedding is celebrated, a honeymoon begun, a revelation made and plot hatched.

Act 2 Volume Two,

Chapter One: Preparations for a Ball In which Miss Fanny Price accepts a present from Miss Mary Crawford.

Chapter Two: A Ball In which partners are chosen.

Chapter Three: A Proposal In which the Bertram family are variously surprised, delighted, disappointed, confused and outraged.

Chapter Four: Some Correspondence In which much ink is spilt.

Chapter Five: Follies and Grottoes In which the Rushworths meet an old acquaintance.

Chapter Six: A Newspaper Paragraph In which occurs a matrimonial fracas.

Chapter The Last: In which Mr Edmund Bertram declares his feelings to his future bride.

Mansfield Park – the opera

When I first read Mansfield Park, some 30 years ago, I heard music. That doesn’t always happen when I read, and it certainly didn’t happen with Jane Austen's other novels. But there's something about this particular book that provoked musical ideas.

Of course, music is often involved in Austen’s stories: there are dances and private concerts, many of her heroines play the piano (as did Jane Austen herself) and some of them sing. In Mansfield Park, Fanny Price’s opponent Mary Crawford plays that dangerously romantic instrument, the harp.

But while I was reading the novel, what elicited music was not the literal presence of instruments in the story, but something beneath the surface. I think it was the way the heroine, Fanny Price, so often suffers in silence. There are clues to her feelings, but unlike the lively Emma Woodhouse, or the high-spirited Elizabeth Bennet, she does not express them. Her reticence invited music, as a way of revealing those hidden emotions.

Two scenes particularly stood out as especially poignant, and musical. Fanny’s beloved Edmund is distracted and entranced by Mary Crawford, but one evening he joins Fanny to gaze out of the window at the stars. Fanny is overjoyed to be reunited with him – but then Mary Crawford starts to sing, and Edmund is drawn back to her, away from the window where Fanny now stands alone, looking out at the stars. This follows a scene where Fanny helplessly watches Edmund going off into a wilderness with Mary Crawford, leaving Fanny alone on a bench in silent suffering. These scenes have haunted me for years: Fanny’s pained silences gave me the impulse to write music for her and I began to think about a Mansfield Park opera.

Over the years, I often mentioned my fantasy Mansfield Park opera to other people. Eventually it was commissioned by Heritage Opera company, which specialises in taking opera to stately homes and historic buildings. I'd always imagined the opera happening in a stately home, accompanied just by a piano. After all, singing around the piano is an entertainment which Jane Austen would immediately have recognised. And a central scene in the novel involves a group of young people rehearsing a play in the drawing-room of a country house.

In its original chamber form, the opera has already enjoyed quite a few productions in the UK, Germany, the USA, Canada, and Australia, playing in the ballrooms and large halls of stately homes as well as in theatres. Sometimes, watching it in a larger auditorium, I found myself wondering what it would be like with an orchestra, and no sooner did I start thinking about it, than I could hear a little chamber orchestra - around a dozen players, still with a piano playing a prominent role, but using all the instrumental colours of the period. I realised that, while I was composing for piano, I had been subconsciously imagining other instrumental colours all along.

The orchestration of Mansfield Park was commissioned by The Grange Festival in 2017, the bicentenary of Jane Austen's death. The Grange, in Northington, is just a few miles from Jane Austen’s birthplace, Steventon.

Jonathan Dove, 2023