Join the Salmar Classic Saturday, Nov. 10 for an operatic retelling of novel and subsequent Alfred Hitchcock film, Marnie.
Composer Nico Muhly unveils his new opera commissioned for the Met, with this gripping reimagining of Winston Graham’s 1961 novel, set in the 1950s about a beautiful, mysterious young woman who assumes multiple identities.
Marnie was premiered by English National Opera in November 2017 and now premieres at the Met.
The subject, Muhly argues, “screams out for operatic treatment,” and his heroine – a thief and liar acting out of compulsive responses to half-remembered childhood trauma – certainly has antecedents elsewhere. Muhly links her fear of sex and physical contact to Debussy’s Mélisande who, like Marnie, is also trapped in a marriage with a potentially abusive man. Muhly and his librettist, Nicholas Wright follow the outlines of the novel rather than the 1964 Hitchcock film. Whereas Hitchcock relocated the drama to the U.S., they retain the original British county setting.
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In a gesture towards Jungian psychology, Marnie is tracked by four similarly dressed “shadows”, who sing in close harmony, while eight male dancers in suits hover round her, omnipresent reminders of the masculinity she understandably dreads. The chorus is both essential to the drama and comments upon it. Though there is a large orchestra involved, Muhly uses it with discretion, so that Wright’s skilful text comes through clearly. Muhly twins each protagonist with an orchestral instrument. An oboe, by turns elegant and shrill, probes Marnie’s psyche while growling trombones suggest Mark’s desire.
Director Michael Mayer has devised a fast moving, cinematic world for this exhilarating story of denial and deceit. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard sings the enigmatic Marnie, and baritone Christopher Maltman is Mark, the man who pursues her—with disastrous results. Robert Spano conducts.
Marnie starts at 9:55 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 10.
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