With abundant imagination, elegance and wit, composer Jonathan Dove and librettist Alasdair Middleton have transformed Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" into a very effective little opera.
If you haven't yet caught Peabody Chamber Opera's production -- the work's U.S. premiere -- at Baltimore Theatre Project, there's one more chance Sunday. (The under-heated venue may make you feel even a little more connected to the early 19th century.)
Austen's story of poor Fanny Price, she of the plain looks, modest prospects and eventual romantic triumph, is opera-ready.
Middleton has constructed a text that playfully honors the source material (the chorus intones each chapter and its title to launch the quick-flowing scenes), while neatly providing enough text to delineate characters and conditions. Rhyme is subtly employed throughout.
To give the lines life, Dove provides a nearly endless stream of inventive melody (he has great fun setting such words as "serpentine") and colorful accompaniment -- the latter all the more impressive for having been written for nothing more than piano, four hands.
Much of the score's appeal comes from that keyboard part, with its distinctive application of minimalist-related idioms and its finely nuanced shading. Pianists Johanna Kvam and Hanna Shin make the most of the assignment, becoming major stars of the production, sensitively conducted by Eileen Cornett.
Directed and designed by Mark Streshinsky, the economical staging conjures up time and place with sliding panels for projecting images (Elizabeth Digney designed the spot-on graphics). Douglas Nelson's lighting provides the perfect finishing touch on the visuals.
(A bit of audience participation for a dance scene in Act 2 looks every bit as awkward and unnecessary as you might imagine, but it's mercifully brief.)
The young singers are mixed in terms of tone and technical polish, but they offer consistent vibrancy of phrase. They also carry out Streshinsky's carefully timed movements in nimble, telling fashion. (Efforts at British accents are not entirely persuasive.)
Some of the most effective singing comes from Claire Weber (Fanny Price), Natanya Washer (Maria Bertram), Brittani McNeil (Julia Bertram) and Lauren Randolph (Mary Crawford).
Oh, yes, and there's a little dog, too -- a perfectly behaved pug for Lady Bertram, one more authentic note in this most welcome introduction to a beautifully crafted opera.