Mansfield Park: a night to remember at Englefield House

Newbury Spring Festival: Mansfield Park by Waterperry Opera at Englefield House on Wednesday, May 11. Review by LIN WILKINSON

Jonathan Dove, once the wunderkind of contemporary music and now a very well-established composer, has written a sparkling score for this chamber opera and was in the audience to see it performed.

All art forms have to continually re-imagine their output to keep work fresh and to appeal to new audiences. Opera finds this especially difficult, and Dove has done a great deal to bring opera to new ears and changing generations.

Alasdair Middleton’s libretto shares equal honours. Like a good screenplay, it is concise, witty, humorous, and true to the flavour of the novel.

The young cast (mercifully mirroring the ages of Austen’s characters) sang with verve and total commitment, both solo and as ensembles. Today’s audiences demand dramatic ability too, and the singers had this in spades.

Dove scored the opera to be performed in country houses, so the Long Gallery at Englefield was not only a hermetically fitting space, but almost a player in the piece. Piano accompaniment by music director Bradley Wood worked perfectly within the setting and the production’s approach.

Smartly directed, minimally staged and with Regency costuming, scenes were conjured by movement and grouping rather than props, a veiled cast at one point almost akin to a Greek chorus.

Mansfield Park has serious themes; the class system, the subordinate position of women and, tangentially, the slave trade. Here, however, inter-relationships were privileged, with sexual tension and scandal also in the mix.

Maria Bertram (Ellie Neate as a real minx) marries Mr Rushworth (a suitably dense Guy Withers) knowing him to be a fool: “I’m going to marry 12,000 a year… independence and splendour shall be my consolation.” A transactional marriage if ever there was one. It all ends in tears when she and the louche Henry Crawford (Robin Bailey) run away together.

Fanny Price, intensely sung by Flora Macdonald, is literally the poor relation, demeaned and put upon. However, here she and Edmund (an empathetic Milo Harries) were the moral heart of the opera – and, of course, she gets her man in the end.

It’s not often that music, words, voices and setting gel so well. A night to remember.

• Waterperry Opera Festival runs from Friday, August 12 - Saturday 21 Mansfield Park in this year's Festival was presented by Waterperry Opera Festival and also features as part of their own summer festival along with seven other enchanting opera and theatre productions across eight days set within the Waterperry House and Gardens. Enjoy a relaxing, fun and informal day-out with family and/or friends. With affordable tickets, there's something for everyone. All ages welcome.