Jonathan Dove: taking opera to the streets
by Heather Belot
British composer Jonathan Dove has built an international reputation breaking every convention in the opera rule book. He stages operas in shopping malls, tells stories drawn from news headlines, and attracts audiences who can’t tell Puccini from Wagner. His 2002 TV opera When she died… was broadcast to an audience of close to a million viewers in the United Kingdom. His best-known work, Flight, is set in an airport. His second TV opera Man on the Moon tells the story of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and his community operas have been staged everywhere from cathedrals to market squares.
This summer, during a Jarislowsky Master Artist residency at the Centre, Dove mentored participants in the Centre’s Opera as Theatre program, and worked on an operatic retelling of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park designed for performance in a stately home. His chamber opera Siren Song was a highlight of the 2009 Banff Summer Arts Festival. He spoke to Inspired about breaking the rules and expanding the boundaries of opera.
Tell us about your background.
I had a long apprenticeship. I didn’t begin composing in earnest until I was 30. I spent my twenties as a freelance musician, playing the piano in theatres, contemporary music ensembles, even in restaurants; but most of all playing for opera rehearsals. Sometimes I worked for a touring opera company — I arranged great operatic masterpieces for a 15-piece orchestra so we could perform in places that didn’t have an opera house, or even a theatre.
When I started writing operas, I discovered that I was often excited by real contemporary events. I found them liberating as subject matter. If I think about an event in history, I find it hard to get past the music of that period, and find music of my own to tell the story. Whereas with a story that takes place now, there are no limits. Of course, that’s also true of myths and fairytales. So I get inspired by stories that are either “right now”, or “long ago” and “far away”. I’ve written operas about the refugee in Charles de Gaulle airport (before Spielberg made a film [The Terminal] about him), the first moon landing, Princess Diana’s funeral, and the Channel Tunnel. I’ve also written The Adventures of Pinocchio, Tobias and the Angel, and a contemporary re-telling of the story of the Tower of Babel.
How does the process of creating a community-based opera differ from other operas you’ve created?
In Britain there is a tradition of community theatre — plays made out of reminiscence material, sometimes performed by the people who told the stories. And there is a tradition of operas involving large amateur casts — Benjamin Britten’s Noye’s Fludde is the best-known example. I’ve blended those traditions, writing a series of pieces in which we invited a town to tell its own story in song. Typically these had casts of 200 people, and also used local musicians — orchestras, brass bands, samba bands, accordion clubs, guitar ensembles, even a yodelling harmonica-player. The biggest had 600 performers. The audience followed on foot as the story moved around a cathedral, then out into the town, across the market square and into a huge mall where children representing angels came down the escalators.
As a composer of contemporary operas, how do you reach new audiences?
I thought television was going to be a way forward, and wrote two operas specifically for TV. But the impact of multiple channels and the Internet has made television finances precarious, so I don’t think this will develop further (in the U.K. at least) any time soon. I haven’t been able to think of a way of using the Internet operatically, except as a kind of gimmick — although I have a fantasy about a climate-change opera performed in several countries simultaneously, reflecting the international collaboration which will be needed to meet this universal challenge.
The most exciting thing is still to be in the same space as live singers and instrumentalists, experiencing the power of music to bring people together. Recently, I’ve been writing pieces for a family audience, in the hope of introducing young people to the world of opera. At some performances of The Adventures of Pinocchio, half the audience was children. I was very proud when I heard one child afterwards asking his father, “What opera can we see next?”
Jonathan Dove’s residency was supported by the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Master Artist Program Fund and the Maclab Enterprises Endowment Fund.
Above photo: Jonathan Dove's residency was supported by The Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Master Artist Program Fund and the Maclab Enterprises Endowment Fund.
