Mansfield Park
"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery"
Overview
This newly-orchestrated version of Mansfield Park was commissioned from Jonathan Dove by The Grange Festival to celebrate the serendipity of two significant milestones for Hampshire occurring in 2017: the 200th anniversary of the death of Austen, and the inaugural season of The Grange Festival in the heart of the county with what promises to be a highly entertaining musical staging of one of her best-loved novels.
Mansfield Park was originally written by Jonathan Dove, to a libretto by Alasdair Middleton based on the novel by Jane Austen, for a cast of ten singers with four hands at one piano. The scale of this new version, with 13 musicians instead of piano, is ideally suited to the theatre of The Grange, and its setting in the magical estate hidden away in the Hampshire countryside, famed for its Greek Revival architecture and overlooking an ornamental lake. It can be imagined as Mansfield Park itself.
The commission also allows a continued relationship between the works of Austen, one of the world’s most recognised and admired authors, and Jonathan Dove, one of Britain’s most successful living composers. This orchestration of Mansfield Park follows a year in which Dove won a BASCA for The Monster in the Maze, a community opera commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle in three separate productions.
Mansfield Park underpins the vision of The Grange Festival as a forum of international excellence in promoting and presenting the best, old and new, familiar and original.
- Composer — Jonathan Dove
- Librettist — Alasdair Middleton
- Adapted from the novel by — Jane Austen
- Commissioned by — Heritage Opera
- Orchestral version commissioned by — The Grange Festival
Production Team
Synopsis
- Act I
- Act II
~ Act I ~
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 - Lover's 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
In which a wedding is celebrated, a honeymoon begun, a revelation made and a plot hatched.
~ Act II ~
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 Seven - The Last
In which Mr Edmund Bertram declares his feelings to his future bride.
Cast
Reviews
David Parry drove this sparkling score forward with ease and drew polished playing from members of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Trinity Laban
Bachtrack
a finely crafted, instantly attractive opera
Classical Source
Personality oozes from Sarah Pring's Lady Bertram and Jeni Bern's Mrs Norris
The Stage
I would put an Austen tenner on this becoming a summer opera favourite, not least because it is both amusing and heartfelt. Dove and his librettist, Alasdair Middleton, are in tune with Mansfield Park's sense and sensibilities
The Times
Martin Lloyd-Evans directs the staging energetically, framed by Dick Bird's simple but elegant design
The Telegraph
Dove and his brilliant librettist Alasdair Middleton, did provide us with charming entertainment which was stylishly and slicky staged by director Martin Lloyd-Evans and designer Dick Bird
The grandiose architecture of The Grange was a fitting place to stage this new operatic production of Mansfield Park celebrating Jane Austen's 200th and extending The Grange Festival's successful 2017 season
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