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The Social Politics of Nico Muhly's Marnie

Evans, Rachel M
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1594569041054224

Abstract Details

2020, Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, Music History.
As Nico Muhly’s 2017 opera, Marnie, comes to a close, the eponymous character stands center stage, handcuffed and surrounded by police. She sings, paradoxically, “I’m free.” The plot arrives at this juxtaposition following a twisted and mysterious series of events in which Marnie, a thief, is tormented by her crimes and ultimately freed by admitting her lies. While the ending remains the same, Marnie’s outlook on her life and future differ from the ending of the opera’s source: Winston Graham’s 1961 novel of the same name. Throughout her story, Marnie is plagued by mental illness and pressured by the sexual advances of her employers, Mark and Terry. While issues of mental health and sexual violence have been prominent in opera going back hundreds of years, such themes were even more salient in the social climate surrounding Marnie’s premiere. The 2010s saw an increased awareness of both issues, and while Graham’s novel left them relatively unacknowledged, the post-2000 era stressed the importance of representing redemption for victims. By confronting her trials with mental illness and sexual coercion, as well as her own mistakes, Marnie is able to rise above her dark past and redeem herself in a way that sets her apart from many of the canonic operatic heroines still represented frequently in the twenty-first-century opera house. In this thesis, I analyze the social issues of mental illness and sexual politics inherent in Marnie’s story, with particular attention to how they are treated in Muhly and librettist Nicholas Wright’s version. I juxtapose the history of both issues on the operatic stage and in the surrounding social climate with Muhly’s interviews and writings in order to explicate the motivation behind Muhly’s compositional choices. I also conduct musical and dramatic analyses of the four main characters to show how musical elements represent their respective challenges with mental health. Through these methods, I highlight how Marnie responds to the time and place in which it was composed by presenting relevant social politics on stage.
Ryan Ebright, PhD (Advisor)
Eftychia Papanikolaou, PhD (Committee Member)
87 p.
Music
Opera; Marnie; Nico Muhly; Winston Graham; Sexual Violence in Opera; Mental Illness in Opera; 21st century Opera

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Evans, R. M. (2020). The Social Politics of Nico Muhly's Marnie [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1594569041054224

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Evans, Rachel. The Social Politics of Nico Muhly's Marnie. 2020. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1594569041054224.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Evans, Rachel. "The Social Politics of Nico Muhly's Marnie." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1594569041054224

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1594569041054224
331
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This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.