Fanny, the musical

How do you turn Jane Austen into opera and why pick Mansfield Park, her most demanding novel? Composer Jonathan Dove explains his approach to Richard Betts.

Emma is probably my favourite," says Jonathan Dove of Jane Austen's novels. "It's the one I've reread and that always makes me cry in the same place. Pride and Prejudice makes me laugh, but I never heard music. Mansfield Park, I did Dove is not speaking metaphorically. The Englishman is among the world's most performed and prolific stage composers, with more than 30 operas to his name. Among them is Mansfield Park, a full-length but small-scale work for voices and piano, which NZ Opera is presenting in Wellington and Auckland. The concerts take place in historic buildings (Public Trust Hall in Wellington, Settlers Country Manor in Auckland), with full Regency costume, to capture a sense of music-making in Jane Austen's time.

Of the author's novels, Mansfield Park is the downbeat one. The writing still sparkles - this is Jane Austen, after all - but with an underlying seriousness rather than the combative wit of Pride and Prejudice or Emma. Meanwhile, the lead character, Fanny Price, isn't always easy to like.

"[Fanny] is not everyone's favourite heroine," admits Dove, "but I suppose I felt some sort of connection and wanted to tell her story."

In the book, says Dove, Fanny's emotions are internalised; she is not outwardly expressive or vocal about her feelings. She doesn't tell us she's disappointed by events, we observe it. Dove's opera spins that around.

"In operas, people get to sing their feelings," he says. "Fanny is the only character who gets to sing on her own, so she's the one person on whose inner world we eavesdrop; everyone else, we learn what's going on through their exchanges with others."