BY LOUISE CROSSEN
From full-scale operas to chamber operas, operas for TV to music for community choirs, Jonathan Dove has done it all.
The highly regarded British composer kicked off his musical life on piano and viola before studying composition at Cambridge and going on to have his works featured at the Last Night of the Proms and King’s College Cambridge.
Now, students of the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University will get to take advantage of his enormously vast opera knowledge. He’ll educate students in a series of workshops kicking off on February 23, and we chat with him about composing, emerging artists…and his new satirical opera about Karl Marx.
You have spoken about the need to create compelling new work that attracts and retains audiences. Is it important to make opera accessible to people of all ages and walks of life?
I think it’s vital for everyone to realise as early as possible that the opera house is a place of excitement and magic. I was very proud, after a performance of my The Adventures of Pinocchio, to hear a happy little child coming out of the theatre asking his dad which opera they could see next. Opera is an expensive medium, and that creates obstacles. But the art-form itself, the actual experience, can speak to everyone.
You have worked with community choirs, and even had a group of primary school kids perform and produce one of your operas! Why is this kind of work important or rewarding?
Most people don’t think of themselves as good singers, and they are amazed by the wonderful sound they can make when they join together with others. So along with the purely musical pleasure of singing together, there’s the joy of seeing people discover what they are capable of.
Professional musicians get used to doing what they love all the time. For children, and for amateurs, it’s still new, and there’s a special energy that is released when people get to do something they don’t often do.
What students will you be working with at the Queensland Conservatorium? What are you hoping they get out of the experience?
I’ll be working with the whole of the first year – around 160 students – and we’ll spend a week devising a piece that will celebrate their combined talents, and the wonderful possibilities of the conservatorium building. These students will be meeting for the first time, of course. I hope this will be a fun way for them to get to know each other, and start to discover all the kinds of music they can make together.
Have you ever worked in Australia before?
This is my first time in Australia! My operas have been performed here, but without me; and although I have family in Perth, I have never managed to visit them here, so I am ridiculously excited.
As well as composing traditional full-scale opera works, you have also worked on chamber pieces, family-friendly work, community operas and even operas for TV. Do you enjoy working across different mediums?
I enjoy exploring the enormous range of what opera can be: grand, intimate, friendly, overwhelming. I think the operatic experience, where singing carries you away in a story, can be universal: it doesn’t have to be restricted to opera houses, wonderful though they are. It can happen anywhere, on any scale; and children and untrained adults can play a part.
I believe your parents were architects. But were you also exposed to opera growing up? What started your love affair with opera?
Both my parents were architects: they designed a house for us when I was 10. My mother loved music, and was a good pianist. Music was always in the air, but very rarely opera. By the time I left university, I had listened to quite a few operas, but I had only seen three or four. Because I was a good sight-reader, I started to pick up freelance work playing piano for opera rehearsals, and it was like a door opening into a new world of drama and beauty and adventure. I couldn’t believe my luck. And I couldn’t get enough of it.
Can you remember your first musical experience as a child?
Some of my earliest memories are of my mother playing the piano. She worked hard all day designing homes, and caring for ours, and then when the children were in bed, she would play Debussy, Clair de Lune and Deux arabesques; or Handel, Ombra mai fu; or songs from Oklahoma. The next day, I would copy what she had played, from memory, as well as I could. Quite soon, I also started making up my own pieces. And I haven’t really stopped.
I read you are currently developing a comedic opera about Karl Marx? How is this project progressing?
The music is all finished, with just a little tidying up of the full score still to do. I’ve now seen the set designs, which are fantastic! So I can’t wait for rehearsals to begin. Marx in London will be premiered in Germany in December – in Bonn, where Beethoven was born. I wrote the opera in English, because I didn’t think I could be funny in German – and actually it will be performed in English. There are a lot of funny rhymes that would be hard to translate, and we think the audience will understand everything. It’s always humbling how well other Europeans speak English.
What is your typical ‘day in the life’ as a composer?
There are several different kinds of ‘typical day’! Before I start to write a piece, there can be a long period of gestation, where I’m not sure what it wants to be. As well as doodling at the piano or the computer, trying out little sketches, I may need to go on long walks, or cycle along the canal, or visit galleries, or read. Once a piece has taken off, I spend the whole day sitting writing until dinner time, with maybe a bit of a walk after lunch.
All of this is very solitary, so I look forward to the days I will later spend in rehearsals, or travelling to performances where I perhaps meet the singers afterwards; or very occasionally working with young musicians: this can be intense, sociable, and extremely rewarding.
And finally, who are some of your influences – whether it’s other composers, pop culture, authors, or artists?
A formative influence was making chamber arrangements of great operas for a touring company – reducing Wagner’s Ring by half the length and rescoring it for 18 players; making reductions of Mozart, Puccini, Rossini and Verdi. And also, Bernstein: I absorbed the tradition of the master opera-composers that way, with a little bit of Broadway on the side.
Benjamin Britten led the way in all the things I try to do: community opera, television opera, operas for children to perform, opera for all the family; all kinds of vocal music, for soloists, church choirs or big choruses with orchestra. Stravinsky is my hero.
Of living composers, I think you can hear in my music that I love John Adams and Arvo Pärt. Most of my work is collaborative: I often work with writers, especially dramatists. I spend a lot of time at the theatre and the cinema, and that also informs my storytelling.
Jonathan Dove is hosting a series of student workshops from February 23 to March 2 at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University. We warmly thank Louise Crossen, who works at the con, for interviewing Jonathan for CutCommon!
*Queensland Conservatorium is a pick-up point for CutCommon’s inaugural print magazine! Head in to grab your copy as part of our national Roving Launch!*
Image supplied. Credit: Andrew Palmer.
