‘Emma is probably my favourite,” says Jonathan Dove of Jane Austen’s novels. “It’s the one I’ve reread and that always makes me cry in the same place. Pride and Prejudice makes me laugh, but I never heard music. Mansfield Park, I did.”
Dove is not speaking metaphorically. The Englishman is among the world’s most performed and prolific stage composers, with more than 30 operas to his name. Among them is a full-length but small-scale work for voices and piano, which NZ Opera is presenting in Wellington and Auckland. The concerts take place in historic buildings (Public Trust Hall
