A BRAND new opera based on a Jane Austen novel will make its debut at a Hampshire festival this year.

The Grange Festival is an operatic festival being launched in June at The Grange, Northington, Alresford.

The festival organisers have announced the world premiere of a specially-commissioned orchestral version of Mansfield Park commemorating the 200th anniversary of the death of Hampshire’s greatest female writer Jane Austen.

The opera is composed by Jonathan Dove and librettist Alasdair Middleton. Dove has written more than 20 operatic works including The Day After and The Monster in the Maze.

The production will be performed on Saturday September 16 and Sunday September 17 at the Grade1 listed neo-classical mansion owned by Lord Ashburton.

This newly-orchestrated version of Mansfield Park was commissioned from Jonathan Dove by The Grange Festival to celebrate two cultural milestones for Hampshire occurring in 2017: the 200th anniversary of the death of Austen, and the inaugural season of The Grange Festival in the heart of the her home county.

This orchestration of Mansfield Park follows a year in which Dove won a BASCA for The Monster in the Maze, a community opera commissioned by the London Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and performed under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle in three separate productions.

This production of Mansfield Park puts down a firm marker for The Grange Festival’s desire to extend its work outside the festival season.

The Grange Festival’s inaugural summer season, June 7-July 9, includes new productions of Monteverdi’s ‘Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria’, Bizet’s ‘Carmen’, Britten’s ‘Albert Herring’, as well as a performance of Verdi’s ‘Requiem’ and an evening devoted to the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein and Rodgers and Hart with the John Wilson Orchestra.

The Grange Festival’s Artistic Director Michael Chance said: “I am so pleased that Jonathan Dove has agreed to orchestrate Mansfield Park for The Grange Festival. It’s such a perfect piece for our gem of a theatre.

"The setting and the conceit of a play within a play is a crucial part of Jane Austen’s story - in a house within the house which gives rise to a unique relationship between the opera and the company. My hope is that devotees of Jane Austen, of opera and of The Grange will all come to see what promises to be a highly entertaining musical staging of one of her best-loved stories.”

Nicholas Suffolk, Exhibitions and Interpretation Manager at Hampshire Culture Trust, said: “We are delighted that The Grange Festival is staging this premiere of Mansfield Park. The performances will form an important part of the Jane Austen 200 celebrations; a programme of exhibitions, performances, lectures and more, celebrating Hampshire author Jane Austen on the 200th anniversary of her death. We aim to bring national and international audiences to our county to celebrate Jane’s life in Hampshire.”

The Grange Festival production will bring together director Martin Lloyd-Evans and conductor David Parry. The cast celebrates the best of British with some of the best emerging talent plus well-known operatic stars. Casting includes Martha Jones as Fanny Price, Sarah Pring as Lady Bertram, and Grant Doyle as Sir Thomas Bertram, plus Angharad Lyddon, Henry Neill, Jeni Bern, Daisy Brown, Nick Pritchard and Oliver Johnston.

The Grange Festival is the only opera festival in the country with a singer as Artistic Director, The Festival is committed to bringing the highest standards of performance to audiences through a range of opera and theatrical work by working with world-class directors, musicians from the UK and abroad and creating the most exciting artistic collaborations. In the years ahead, The Grange Festival aims to make its work as accessible as possible through an ambitious programme of events and education work, which will utilise the theatre for more of the year, as well as extensive outreach work and a subsidised ticket scheme.