Jonathan Dove is our most prolific composer of opera: his new one, Marx in London, opening in Bonn next month, is, he says, his 29th. Perhaps best known for 1998’s Flight, about a refugee trapped in an airport — a story later turned into a film by Steven Spielberg — he is also a composer of songs and choral works prized by amateurs all over the world for their accessibility and melodic grace, and his love of traditional harmony.
He’s often dubbed a “minimalist”, but that’s a limiting description of his eclectic style. “I’ve certainly been influenced by minimalism,” he admits when we met last week. “It was liberating at a time when I was despairing of the music I was hearing in the