Last night we watched the first three episodes of the 1983(?) BBC production of Mansfield Park. It's well done, the cast is game, but it's my least favorite Jane Austen novel. Fanny Price is such a droopy heroine, and the series, like the book is endless. Anna Massey, however, is a fabulous über-bitch Aunt Norris, but she's not as evil or rotten as the character in the novel.
I've been reading a book on Britten's operas, and the opera following the The Rape of Lucretia of 1946, before Britten settled on Albert Herring, was to be Mansfield Park!