RNCM Opera presents a breathtaking adaptation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park

With four performances spread over seven days, The RNCM delivers a magisterial rendition of Jonathan Dove’s widely celebrated adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel, Mansfield Park, in a soaring chamber opera running from Sun 26 Mar – Sat 1 Apr.

Commissioned by the Heritage Opera Company in 2011 as a site-specific piece to be performed in stately homes, Dove’s masterful composition is the first completed operatic adaptation of any Jane Austen novel ever to be staged. Having ‘heard music’ when initially reading Mansfield Park, Dove developed an innovative yet accessible work which draws on classical pastiche, Philip Glass, Benjamin Britten and even Sondheim, propelled by a strong narrative and flawlessly measured vocal writing which ‘sparkles with style and wit’ from librettist and playwright, Alasdair Middleton.

Led by Critics’ Circle Award-winning conductor Lee Reynolds, the opera unfolds over eighteen chapters, with ten solo roles accompanied by an intimate chamber orchestra, as the ensemble follows Fanny Price and the other residents of ‘The Big House’ as they navigate various obstacles to true love and the origins of happiness under the looming, repressive spectre of formality and tradition. While a comedy-flecked love story at heart, Austen’s work also presents a ‘prophetic social panorama’, as moral clashes escalate between old Tory ‘decency’ and the graceless opportunism of the nouveau riche.

Tickets for this show are half-price for students and under-26s (£12.50). To book, click here.