Composer Jonathan Dove | Photo: Frances Marshall

A radioactive rock. The discovery of a new element. Chemistry is at the centre of a thriller novel by writer and broadcaster Simon Mayo. Itch was released to the young adult literature world in 2012. Now with three books in the best-selling series, it is Opera Holland Park’s turn to interpret the world of Itchingham (Itch) Lofte.

This challenge has been the project of composer Jonathan Dove, whose operatic roster includes the ever-popular Mansfield Park (on at Waterperry Festival this summer) as well as Flight, commissioned by Glyndebourne in 1998. His opera’s for young people include The Enchanted Pig and The Adventures of Pinocchio. But why Itch? It may not appear a first choice for a new opera – the protagonist a 14-year-old chemistry fanatic and element collector from Cornwall.

‘It’s unusual to have an opera where the love interest isn’t a person.’ Jonathan Dove explains. ‘In a way, Itch does love something, but it’s science and especially his element – so therefore, in a way, nature.’

Itch is a production by director Stephen Barlow, commissioned by Opera Holland Park in a co-production with the Canadian Opera Company. It brings together a cast of eight singers including Adam Temple-Smith as Itch and Rebecca Bottone as his mother Jude. Alasdair Middleton is once again Dove’s partner in developing the libretto and young designer Frankie Bradshaw interprets the story for the stage. But is this a children’s opera, or something intended for audiences of every age?

‘It’s a story that Simon Mayo wrote for his son, so it has this fun, adventure feeling’ Dove explained. ‘It also asks the question of what we do with Earth’s resources – it’s so much on everyone’s mind right now. It would be wonderful if the subject and the story would attract in an audience who otherwise might not have thought of opera.’

The first impressions of the score suggests the music is also leaving nothing to chance: ‘It’s an exciting, lyrical, action-packed, wildly brilliant journey. And very witty,’ conductor Jessica Cottis told me. Last working with director Stephen Barlow in 2021 on Holland Park’s production of The Cunning Little Vixen, it’s clear this collaboration with both Barlow and Dove is something that, for her, holds a great deal of trust.

Conductor Jessica Cottis

‘Jonathan writes with such clarity. There’s always this incredible energy and verve that he brings when sharing ideas about his music.’

This energy was certainly something I sensed present in Dove when speaking about Itch. He told me about a distinctive ‘operatic curiosity’ that the story engendered. It might have younger audiences in mind, but the operatic process of interpreting the story is one of deep thought: ‘The world of the elements in itself was musically intriguing. I had to ask what would phosphorus sound like? Then what would this new element – element 126 – sound like?’

For this, he enlisted the help of sound designer Duncan Shave, with whom he had worked on Pulmann’s His Dark Materials at the National Theatre some years earlier to create a sound world for ‘dust’.

‘I wanted the feeling of something shivering and quivering – something acoustic instruments can’t create, but could live alongside. It needed to be highly animated with a very, very active texture. The power of the element is neither good nor bad - it depends who’s using it and to what end. There had to be an ambivalence in the sound, but the feeling also that it is radiating because the element is extraordinarily radioactive.’

Simon Mayo's award-winning sci-fi novel

Then there’s the musical structure of the work. Dove explained how writing for younger audiences means removing any ‘unnecessary complexity’, whilst simultaneously recognising that opera has the power to manipulate time and focus on emotion.

‘No scene should hang around too long - any long passage of slow, quiet music isn’t very friendly to young audiences. There’s a moment in the opera when Itch is wrestling with the potential revolutionary power of his element, but also the forces of darkness and lower part of human nature that are never going to give up. That moment is properly an aria, but it’s not random. It’s at the very heart of the story and something I hope the audience would find absorbing.’

This ‘element-hunting adventure story for all ages’ suggests that there is no limit to the ideas that Jonathan Dove is willing to consider. So what, for him, makes a story operatic?

‘As a composer, I want to hear new sounds and hope that this new dilemma, or crisis - whatever the motor of the story is - provokes something I’ve not heard before. I’m always hoping to surprise myself, so I’m happy when I know that there is another opera on the horizon.’ 

Itch opens on 22 July. operahollandpark.com