Tonight's marnie

[lennygoran]

Very powerful-the production drew me in-very nice opera experience. Len

[lennygoran]

Very powerful-the production drew me in-very nice opera experience. Len

OTOH there's this review. Len



Marnie’ is all too insubstantial at Met Opera premiere

By Anne Midgette
Classical music critic
October 20 at 1:47 AM
People’s brains sometimes shut off when it comes to opera. Dazzled by the idea that it’s exalted and over the top and outside the rules, and by all the talent that comes together to get something on the stage, some people seem simply to abandon common sense.

One demonstration of this is the fact that “Marnie,” the new operatic adaptation of the novel that inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s 1964 film, ran at English National Opera last year before coming to the Metropolitan Opera on Friday night without anybody intervening or pulling the plug. On Friday, I had the sensation of my own brain shutting down when confronted with the result.


The Met also spared no expense. The production, colorful and filled with projections, was by Julian Crouch and 59 Productions, which had a striking debut here with Glass’s “Satyagraha” in 2008, and have done several other pieces, including Muhly’s “Two Boys,” since.

And the cast was filled with talent, from the strong baritone Christopher Maltman and the incisive countertenor Iestyn Davies as the brothers Mark and Terry, through Anthony Dean Griffey as Marnie’s first boss, Mr. Strutt, and Denyce Graves in a vividly sung, slightly over-the-top turn as Marnie’s mother. Newcomer Will Liverman, a fine baritone, made his company debut in a too-small role of Malcolm Fleet. And conductor Robert Spano, an experienced hand with new scores, made an overdue company debut, conducting with more assurance than the score seemed to warrant.

With all of the talent and goodwill in the house, it was deeply disappointing that “Marnie” was so unworthy. A significant problem was Wright’s libretto, which didn’t come close to Hitchcock’s adaptation in terms of making something dramatically viable out of Winston Graham’s 1961 book.



Laboring to be poetic, it was merely sophomoric, troweling on cliche with such abandon that I found myself wondering if the libretto were deliberately trying to evoke the banality of Marnie’s world. (“When you’re having a drink with friends in a bar, are you the same as you are with your old head teacher?” she sings at one point. At another, she describes her beloved horse Forio as “a vast immensity, wet from the rain” whose “eyes were deep and dark as wells.”)

The choruses, although musically promising, served largely either to provide obvious local color (workers gathering in a bar after work to order drinks) or sermonize (a set piece about the agonies of a guilty person lying awake at night).


In a few places, the purple language actually did take a poetic turn. In one passage, Davies’s Terry described the feeling of early morning after a long night of partying, and what it’s like to make love at that bright and fuzzy hour. But this was a rare exception. Counterbalancing it was the fact that Terry also had to sing “I’ll see you torn apart by the hounds of truth” at the end of the fox-hunting scene that is the piece’s denouement.

Muhly is a deeply gifted composer who has yet fully to display those gifts in the two operas of his I’ve seen, and “Marnie” made me wonder if he is perhaps too willing a collaborator, too ready to relinquish strong ideas in the effort to work well together with others. His score, to my ear, was the sound of someone holding back: creating moods and anticipation and setups, with slashing piccolos scattering ornaments and lightning-bolts while the lower instruments piled up grumbling clouds of suspense, without ever actually taking hold and delivering something — beyond flickers of surging sugary emotion at a few moments.

“Marnie” is about a woman who is not who she seems — to the people around her, taken in by her compulsive lies and constant self-reinventions, and to herself. The whole opera spells this out so clearly that it robs itself of its own suspense; every surprise in it has already been revealed along the way.

Isabel Leonard, in the title role, offers a movie-star appearance and a perfectly capable voice, but the same obedient, willing spirit of collaboration that keeps her from creating a heroine who gives you much reason to care about her, surrounded by four look-alike “shadow Marnies” (Deanna Breiwick, Disella Larusdottir, Rebecca Ringle Kamarei and Peabody Southwell) who offer a chorus of her thoughts.

She fit the profile of this docile, earnest opera, which strove so mightily and so dully to fit some kind of perceived mold, but that sadly proved as insubstantial as its heroine.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertai ... 15886aa826

[lennygoran]

Here's another review which has both good and bad things to say about Marnie-still the reviewer in the end calls it a must see! Regards, Len

Metropolitan Opera 2018-19 Review: Marnie

Isabel Leonard & Michael Mayer Shine in Frustrating Opera by Nico Muhly & Nicholas Wright
By David Salazaraccess

Friday, Oct. 19, 2018 was a big night for the Metropolitan Opera.

A few years back, the company commissioned an opera by Nico Muhly with a libretto by Nicholas Wright based on Winston Graham’s “Marnie.” The work premiered in 2017 in London and has now finally made its way to the Metropolitan Opera. The Met was packed in anticipation of the work and on many levels, it was a major success.
A Tale of Two Acts

The libretto by Nicholas Wright is a tale of two acts. The first Act is tight, propulsive, and suspenseful. The action breezes by, the information is presented in a orderly manner, and there is a strong sense of direction. The decision to give Marnie expository monologues or “links” as Muhly calls them, can be a frustrating example of telling instead of showing, but given this story’s need for quick scene changes (it is far more cinematic in this regard), we can understand the choice. The decision to end Act one with Marnie’s fate hanging in the balance is a stroke of dramatic genius and the build to this point is quite compelling.

Also of potent interest throughout this first Act is the theme of men’s power over women. This opera is perfect for the #MeToo movement, with so many moments in the work playing precisely with today’s social milieu. Marnie’s revulsion at Strutt touching her in the first scene is later developed further by Terry trying to force himself onto her after a poker match. This hits its first climax at the end of the first Act when Mark tries to rape her.

But like the suicide attempt, the attempted rape gets mentioned once and is then altogether brushed away from the story and we are then expected to see a burgeoning empathy between the two main characters.

Male dominance remains a vital theme but in the second half, it gets lost as the story tries to develop other themes and newer plot threads. The result is ultimately hit or miss with the emerging plot threads the story tries to balance.

The development of the relationship between Mark and Marnie, despite the rape attempt and the fact that he forced her into marriage against her will, is a solidly handled example of Stockholm Syndrome. This dovetails nicely with the narrative development of Marnie’s sense of being increasingly trapped by her world. This is exemplified in the hunt sequence, a symbolic exploration of her losing grip on her reality and increasing powerlessness. The only power she exemplifies in this scene is to kill that which he loves most, which links to her own sense of guilt over the murder of her brother. Ultimately this only damages her further.

Inversely, her past with her mother and dead brother comes to the fore in a brilliant scene of psychoanalysis, disappears, and then reappears with a surprise twist that feels forced rather than earned. In fact, that scene, while essential to Marnie’s development, feels like an anti-climax because the thread had been abandoned a while ago and there was no sense that it needed further development.

Another subplot that really feels a bit underwhelming (and frankly unnecessary) is Mark and Terry’s rivarly and their business issues. We care about Marnie and her relationship to Mark; her relationship to Terry is really inconsequential and it never really feels like he might be a veritable threat to her outside of their first scene together. As for the business troubles, we are constantly told about them, but then Mark suddenly has no financial problems when it comes to paying off Strutt. Maybe if he actually had financially troubles there would be more tension and a greater sense of pressure placed on Marnie when her past starts to impose itself negatively on her present, but that’s not even the point of the story. I don’t think the audience would care much if Mark’s company wasn’t mentioned at all and the story would not lose much either. It might be a theme suited to a novel, but not necessary for an opera.

This “sloppiness” in the second act certainly fits in with the larger concept of Marnie’s psychological state growing more and more unsteady as she feels more trapped, which is definitely a nice contrast to the sense of control and pacing in Act one that correlates with Marnie’s own sense of poise. But it doesn’t always feel as immersive and there are moments where one might ask oneself where this is all going.
Two Musical Stories

Musically, the work follows a similar pattern but inversely. The music doesn’t always feel like an active participant in the drama in the first Act. You know it’s there, but somehow you don’t really feel it for large chunks. The vocal lines don’t seem to build emotionally, leaving this sense of frustration. For example, when the chorus exclaims that Strutt has been robbed, every word seems to be explored with the same dynamic and pitch; there is no ascension in either, giving the moment little sense of excitement. Sure, as an audience member, you know what has happened and what they will say, but emotionally the chorus must have some intense experience of it. With no real crescendo or build in either volume or pitch, the moment falls flat.

Marnie’s mini-monologues, or “links” as Muhly calls them, also follow in this vein, all of them sounding the same from a musical standpoint. Her emotions shift and the drama is transitioning and building before us, but her emotional state or the way she describes those events never seems to.

Overall, one got the sense that the music was there because this is an opera and by default the music HAS to be there. Of course, it had an impact on the proceedings, albeit subliminally, but on the whole it didn’t really cast much of an emotional impact. That isn’t to say that there weren’t some moments of brilliance in the first Act. The choice to pair Marnie’s tortured and broken mother with a solo viola created a sense of loneliness and desolation after the orchestral sea that had come before. We really understood the broken state of Marnie’s mother.

The climax of the first Act was also brilliantly executed as it gave us a sense of Mark’s predatory nature, the orchestra rising and growing with his vocal line, giving a sense of aggression and struggle. Here Muhly seemed more in touch with the intensity and dynamic between the two main characters.

It was during this second half that we got to really feel a greater sense of variety of color. Mark’s monologue early on as they prepare for a dinner is colored with delicate winds and strings, softening him to us.

The psychoanalysis scene is, bar none, the best moment in the entire opera, the orchestra plumbing the main character’s psychological depths, first violently, then delicately, ending in a duet between mother and daughter that foreshadows their connection through shared guilt. It’s a show-stopping moment and the theatrical coup that the work had been searching for previously. Conductor Robert Spano, in his Met debut, was at his best in this particular section (though to be fair he was excellent the entire night in maintaining a sense of musical composure and unity).

Marnie’s vocal line seems to find greater lyricism in this act and there is a general sense of excitement when the entire group goes for a hunt.

But it is also here where there is a mix of frustration over the limitations of the storytelling.

While it is undeniably impossible to stage Forio’s demise literally, it is an opportunity for Muhly to truly immerse us in the moment and make us feel the tension build. He does that, to an extent, but just before the music and scene reach the climax and it all comes crashing down, the music halts and the characters TELL us what happened, destroying the emotional tension that was building. This is an instant where one wonders why Muhly doesn’t trust the ability of showing us and having us feel the moment through his music, rather than having to resort to the crutch of the text explaining the action. The characters could still react to it (as they often do in opera), but the audience is ultimately robbed of an opportunity to feel the moment with the characters.

The end of the opera is also a winner, with Marnie’s proclamations of freedom giving truly lyrical flight; the music finally soars in a way that it never could throughout the night.
The Perfect Director

However, these elements while inconsistent, are brought together quite powerfully by Michael Mayer’s brilliant direction. His previous work at the Met amounted to one production – the confusing Las Vegas “Rigoletto.” He is due for a lot of other major projects at the Met, such as “Aida” and “La Traviata,” so this was an essential litmus test to see whether he had more to offer.

He certainly did.

As the opera commences, we see images of Marnie projected across large screens; each one features a different version of Marnie, which emphasizes her fractured personality and different identities. These visuals return at junctures of the story, playing up the motif of Marnie’s fractured being.

The scenes change rapidly from one to the next, giving the work a sense of cinematic pacing. The space may be split at times to facilitate this kind of scene change, also brilliant in its execution. This is best exemplified when Marnie visits her mother on one side of the stage; the lighting dims after this encounter and we are shown the aftermath of the robbery in Strutt’s offices on the other side of the stage. It’s economic, effective, and clearly in tune with the necessities of the story being told.

But Mayer delves deeper that just tight staging. His economical approach to the overall arc, allows for greater freedom in exploring symbolism.

Throughout the production, Marnie is pursued by two different groups of people. The first of these are her other personalities, almost like ghosts that linger and won’t go away. They are a part of her, even if she doesn’t want them around.

The other is a group of men that constantly watch Marnie. The male gaze is at the core of the themes of this work, with Marnie seemingly always subjected to the power of men in every context of her life. When she is trapped by Mark, he becomes the owner of her identity and how she is seen by others. Characters note that Mark is the one purchasing Marnie’s attire, suggesting that it is he who is dressing her up now as he sees fit. Marnie has lost control of her identity and is now a construct of the male gaze.

So it is no surprise to see this group of men come out and follow her throughout. Their first appearance is precisely when she robs Strutt’s office and the suggestion is that they each resemble her past crimes, which will always follow her. The motif of the men following Marnie is furthered in the hunt scene where they are literally the ones in pursuit, emphasizing not only that Marnie’s past is putting her on the brink. It further reflects the idea of men holding control over women.

Arianne Phillips’ wardrobe is perfect and spotless. Where most characters kind of blend into the world around them with shades of grey, Marnie always stands out with a variety of vibrant colors that make it impossible to look away. Of course, Isabel Leonard has a lot to do with how effective the wardrobe looks (she wears them perfectly), but the conceptual design is spot-on.
They Make It Happen

None of this matters without a cast to set the stage on fire and no one missed a beat in this regard.

As Marnie’s shadows, Deanna Breiwick, Dísella Lárusdóttir, Rebecca Ringle Kamarei, and Peabody Southwell made a strong impact every time they were on the stage. Their singing tended toward more straight tone, but it generated an eerie atmosphere around the heroine.

Anthony Dean Griffey’s Mr. Strutt was a gruff, obnoxious fellow, the tenor blasting sound throughout to drive home the characterization. He delivered it to perfection.

Janis Kelly also made a strong impression as the elder Mrs. Rutland, her singing had a pointedness that cut through powerfully. We really got a sense of her status as a controlling matriarch and when Muhly demanded that she rise to the higher end of her soprano, she did so with puissance.

The same could be said with Denyce Graves as Marnie’s mother. There was bite and aggression in her singing, her descent into the lower range giving a sense of ugliness that suited the murkier nature of this character. She was contrasted by a more gentle vocal performance from Jane Bunnell as Lucy, who helps out Marnie’s mother. Child singer Gabriel Gurevich won himself quite the ovation at the end of the show as he held his own with the star-studded cast in his brief exchanges.
A Story of Contrasting Rutlands

Iestyn Davies returned to the Met for yet another modern opera after last year’s success in “The Exterminating Angel.” Muhly must be commended here for his choice of using a countertenor for the role of Terry Rutland. This FACH choice provides great contrast with that of the baritonal Mark, but in ways we might not expect. We might see Mark as a stronger figure as hinted at the stronger voice type, but it is actually the higher-pitched Terry who is more active and enterprising, as his mother puts it. He is the one who has the strength to turn Marnie in. Where Mark’s actions are often limited, Terry sees a bigger picture and acts on it. Muhly’s style often tends toward the baroque in some of his writing, which also makes a countertenor an obvious choice.

Davies puts on a scene-stealing performance, his very presence generating tension on stage with his lecherous look at Marnie. He sang with great poise that reflected Terry’s more powerful figure within the story. There is no doubt that he struck his biggest impact during the Poker scene as he tried to force himself on Marnie, prying and prying, his singing growing more agitated and aggressive. The way he grabbed her was visceral and painful to watch and the eternal oddity of the countertenor against a full symphonic orchestra only added to the discord and dissonance of the scene.

While Christoper Maltman’s baritone flooded the theater with sound, we slowly saw his Mark grow weaker and weaker over the course of the night. Our first impression of him is that of strength and might as he strolled into Strutt’s. There was always a sense of confidence and poise throughout the first act and we even saw a hint of gentleness in his first scene alone with Marnie. But when he captures her, Maltman’s voice grew sturdier and his physicality firmer. In the final scene between them, he was pure violence, his sound blasting through the theater as he approached her like a predator after his prey. Suddenly, he went from a seemingly nice guy to a monster.

But then the second Act shifted the perspective a bit and Maltman sang with a gentler sound and his own interactions with Marnie were far more relaxed. As he offered to bring Florio, there was brightness in his timbre. The character grows weaker from here and his only real act of strength or courage is his embarrassing fight with his brother at a dinner party. He gets injured in the hunt, winds up in the hospital, and walks onstage with a hobble in the final scene. His only action here is to beg Marnie to be with him when she gets out of jail. He no longer has any control. Maltman’s voice was nearly a whisper here, the vigor of his singing earlier in the opera a distant shadow. It was a fascinating transformation and a rich characterization.
The ‘It’ Girl

But Isabel Leonard was the star of the night. She’s had her share of major successes at the Met, but this one tops them all. She owned the stage when she was on it; and she was on it almost the entire time.

She WAS Marnie.

She was a bit hunched over in the opening scene as she assumed one of her personas, but the moment that she was alone to make the theft, her entire posture shifted to that of an elegant, firm woman in control. Leonard’s visage was always full of intense expression and just looking at her, you could understand almost everything going on emotionally.

This was best exemplified in how she recoiled from Strutt shaking her hand to how she fought for composure when a stranger at a pub approached her and suggesting that he knew her. Her physicality was a major reason why the sexual harassment scenes with both Rutlands worked so well. She didn’t cower from them, but stood up and put up a fight. We could feel the rage and indignation. In her scene with her mother, her slouched posture hinted at the power dynamic in the relationship. As she sang of Forio, we saw stillness and composure, her look toward the distance giving a sense of momentary bliss that was rare; we got a similar feeling of relief at the end of the opera as she sang that she was free, Leonard’s voice gloriously blooming.

The mezzo’s voice was rock solid the entire night as she navigated what must have been excruciatingly challenging rhythmic passages as written by Muhly. Her diction was spotless, every word given ample clarity. By the end of the night, when she was finally allowed to show off her vocal beauty, the Argentine-American star displayed glorious legato, her sound rich and expansive.

The chorus also put in a strong shift, the ensemble’s music often calling back to similar ensembles by John Adams in his operas. The Met Orchestra, as always, sounded excellent under Spano’s conducting. For whatever reason, the ensemble seems to find another gear when taking on modern works with every piece of the puzzle firmly in its place. There is a sense of polish and sheen that isn’t always present in more standard repertory staples. Everyone is on a different level here in “Marnie” and the opera correspondingly grows because of it.

Ultimately, “Marnie” isn’t going to be for everyone and perhaps the audience that might appreciate its music most could be musicologists (though I am definitely intrigued to give it another listen). Regardless, Isabel Leonard and the rest of the cast are spellbinding and Michael Mayer’s direction makes this a must-see.

http://operawire.com/metropolitan-opera ... ew-marnie/

[lennygoran]

Now Tony has weighed in. Regards, Len

Music|Review: ‘Marnie’ Stays in the Shadows in Nico Muhly’s Opera



By Anthony Tommasini

Oct. 21, 2018

In crucial moments of an opera, despite what characters on stage may be singing about, the orchestra can signal what’s really going on and suggest subliminal emotions and disguised feelings. So the composer Nico Muhly was smart to seize on Winston Graham’s 1961 novel “Marnie,” which inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s strangely stylized 1964 film, as an intriguing subject for an opera.

This story’s baffling central character is a glamorous and troubled woman in late-1950s England, who moves from job to job, changing her look and identity, compulsively embezzling money from employers. But who is she? Why does she do it? Graham’s novel is written as Marnie’s first-person narrative. Even so, the more this Marnie seems to reveal, the less you trust her voice.

Mr. Muhly’s “Marnie,” with an effective libretto by Nicholas Wright, had its much-anticipated American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday. This is Mr. Muhly’s second Met commission. (“Two Boys” opened there in 2013.) With his keen ear for unusual harmonies and eerily alluring sonorities, Mr. Muhly painstakingly tries to use his imagination — and his proven skill at orchestration — to flesh out Marnie’s inner life.

But despite passages of richness, ambiguity and complexity, especially in the orchestra, the music seldom plumbs the darkest strands of this psychological drama. Mr. Muhly opted, it would seem, to maintain mystery through whole stretches of the score, to suggest emotions rather than making everything explicit. He may have held back too much. The music sometimes seems like an accompaniment to the drama, rather than a realization of it.
Image
Christopher Maltman as Mark Rutland, who traps Ms. Leonard’s Marnie into marriage after she is caught stealing from his office safe.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

It starts off strongly by depicting a bustling day at the office of the accounting firm where Marnie works. The chorus sings a gaggle of overlapping phrases (“An invoice for our services,” “I like your nails that color”) that had an intriguingly manic feel. We first hear Marnie (the plush-voiced mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard) exchanging meek pleasantries when introduced by her officious boss, Mr. Strutt (the clarion tenor Anthony Dean Griffey), to a self-assured client, Mark Rutland (the sturdy, suave baritone Christopher Maltman). All the while the orchestra teems with fragments of skittish lines, piercing sonorities with notes that mingle into needling dissonances, chords that unfold in halting bursts atop pulsing rhythmic figures, and ominous, heaving bass lines that sometimes seem eerily disconnected.

The best scenes in “Marnie” come when Mr. Muhly, in sync with Mr. Wright, takes creative chances. Rather than providing Marnie with any sort of tell-all aria, the opera gives her short transitional “links,” as Mr. Muhly calls them, disoriented soliloquy-like passages where in broken bits of restless, leaping lines she voices bitter, confused ruminations. “What shall I be?” she sings after robbing the safe at the accounting office and deciding she must move on with a new identity. In a later link, after Mark forces a kiss upon her, she spouts disgust at his “slobbery lips,” his “flickering tongue,” in shards of phrases over a hurtling orchestra.

In the work’s most inspired touch, Marnie is trailed during key moments by four blonde women wearing single-color office dresses, called Shadow Marnies, who encircle her, providing harmonic backdrops and sometimes melodic counterpoints to her lines. Mr. Muhly, who grew up singing in church choirs, instills these fleeting scenes with hints of early sacred music over pungently subdued writing in the orchestra.

And the shadows were crucial to another compelling scene in the office of a psychoanalyst. Earlier in the opera, after Mark catches her stealing from his office safe, Marnie agrees to marry him, seeing no way out. But frustrated that she recoils at his touch, he makes a bargain: If Marnie will see an analyst he will place a horse she owns, the only thing in life she loves, in a stable for her. In this scene, over a stretch of fraught and suspenseful music, the Shadow Marnies take turns on the analyst’s couch, which proved a powerful metaphor: Don’t all people reveal multiple personalities in a therapist’s office?

Ms. Leonard brings a rich voice, a deceptively demure look and moments of poignant vulnerability to Marnie. Despite this, the extended scenes when Marnie interacts with her employers, her sullen and secretive mother (the mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, back at the Met after a dozen years, and riveting), and even Mark lack dramatic definition and depth. Too many stretches of dialogue are written in a declamatory, slow-moving style that becomes ponderous.

Early in Act II, Mark has a monologue infused with wistful stretches that made me realize how few other times the score opens up lyrically. Marnie, dressing for a business dinner, is in earshot of Mark as he describes coming upon a frightened deer in a meadow. He likens the animal’s panic to the way Marnie resists him. His plaintive lines float atop undulant orchestral ripples and bucolic woodwind harmonies tweaked with clashing intervals. For a moment Mark seems not stiff and domineering, but needy and perplexed.

Mr. Muhly channels the most visceral music of his score into episodes of crude propositioning and sexual aggression that Marnie has come to expect from nearly every man she encounters. In this #MeToo cultural moment, the depicted behavior seems not a throwback to earlier times in gender relations but all too relevant.

A major offender is Terry Rutland, Mark’s younger brother and his “wayward deputy” in the family business, a role for countertenor (the dynamic Iestyn Davies). Terry’s defensiveness about a large red birthmark on the side of his face only fuels his boorish behavior with Marnie. After a poker game at his home, he corners Marnie, who threatens to slap him. “Do it!” Terry shouts, as the orchestra has a rare eruption of gnashing, fitful vehemence. In the final scene of Act I, Mark turns out to be ever worse. Frustrated at their sexless first week of marriage during a miserable honeymoon cruise, Mark tries to force himself on Marnie, who flees into the bathroom and slashes her wrists.

“Marnie” benefits from the director Michael Mayer’s sleek and fluid staging, with inventive sets and projections designed by Julian Crouch and 59 Productions. (It was first seen last year in London for the work’s premiere at the English National Opera.) Scenery changes are deftly rendered through sliding and descending panels on which evocative images are projected.

Mr. Muhly’s music could not have had a better advocate than the conductor Robert Spano, making an absurdly belated Met debut at 57. He highlighted intriguing details, brought out myriad colorings, kept the pacing sure and never covered the singers. Where has he been?

Whatever one’s feelings about the Hitchcock film, it was inspiring to see its star Tippi Hedren, now 88 and looking wonderful, come on stage during final ovations with the operatic Marnie at her side.



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/arts ... ctionfront

[maestrob]

Now THAT's a persuasive review! I know Tommasini has a soft spot for contemporary works, but at least he understands the opera. Given this review, I would like to see it for myself.

[lennygoran]

Now THAT's a persuasive review! I know Tommasini has a soft spot for contemporary works, but at least he understands the opera. Given this review, I would like to see it for myself.

Brian Sat afternoon Nov 10 it's being done live and HD. Regards, Len

[lennygoran]

Glad she does! Regards, Len
Tippi Hedren, Hitchcock’s ‘Marnie,’ Loves the Met’s Opera









By Michael Cooper

Oct. 22, 2018

When she showed up at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday for the opening of the new opera “Marnie,” Tippi Hedren wore an elegant, glittering floor-length gown. In bright red.

“I thought, I’m going to wear it,” Ms. Hedren, 88, who starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1964 film version of “Marnie,” said with a mischievous smile, “and see if anybody gets it.”

Plenty did, to her delight. In the film, the color red — seen in a bunch of gladioli, or an ink stain on a white blouse, or a jockey’s silks — sends Marnie into paroxysms of terror, triggering memories of the childhood trauma that turned her into a deeply troubled kleptomaniac.

The Met has been careful to note that its “Marnie” opera, with a score by Nico Muhly, is based on the 1961 novel by Winston Graham, not Hitchcock’s adaptation. But the film — and Ms. Hedren — define “Marnie” for most people. So the original Marnie turned heads all night on Friday, from a precurtain dinner to the cast party, where she stayed past midnight.

She gave a fist bump (which she prefers to a handshake) to the artist and performer Justin Vivian Bond when they met on the staircase. She shared a moment with the diva Anna Netrebko at the cast party. And she brought down the house with a surprise curtain call, stirring murmurs of “Who?” that soon became exclamations of “Tippi Hedren!”



It was Ms. Hedren’s first trip to the Met. As she settled into a chair at its Grand Tier Restaurant for dinner — at her table was another chic 1960s icon, Barbara Feldon, who played Agent 99 on the TV show “Get Smart” — Ms. Hedren said that her “heart just started to pound” when she learned that “Marnie” was being turned into an opera.

“‘Marnie’ was taken as such a dark film,” she said, adding that it was very different from “The Birds,” her first Hitchcock movie. “It wasn’t a grand Hitchcock suspense thriller. It was a totally different kind of piece. I think it was difficult for the public to grasp that. I don’t think they knew how to look at it.”


The film, in which she starred opposite a young Sean Connery, may be Hitchcock’s most debated. It explores unusually painful subjects, including rape, and has divided critics for more than half a century.

And in recent decades it has taken on dark significance for another reason: Ms. Hedren has spoken and written of the ways that Hitchcock became obsessed with her during its shooting, terrorizing her and later trying to sabotage her career when she rebuffed him.

But she said on Friday that she was not worried that the opera would bring back painful memories.

“I’m totally at peace with it,” she said, noting that she had said what she wanted to in “Tippi: A Memoir,” published in 2016. “Once you put it on paper, it’s there. You’re free.”

After dinner she went down to her parterre box, running into Mr. Muhly, the composer. “I hope you enjoy it!” he said.
Image
Ms. Hedren meeting Nico Muhly, the composer of “Marnie.”CreditVincent Tullo for The New York Times

At intermission, Ms. Hedren said that she was liking it very much, but found it difficult to understand the singing, even though the libretto is in English. It turned out no one had told her about Met Titles, which display the text on the seat backs. She used the system for Act II, and enjoyed herself more.

Then it was time for her surprise curtain call. As she made her way backstage, her friend Karen Cadle asked Met officials if one of the singers could use her microphone to introduce Ms. Hedren to the audience. She was told that opera singers don’t need microphones to fill the vast 3,800-seat theater.

“Amazing,” Ms. Hedren said.

They watched the end of the opera — the traumatic childhood memory that sets the plot in motion is different from the one in the film — from the wings. At the end, Isabel Leonard, the mezzo-soprano who sang the role of Marnie, made her exit as roars of applause filtered backstage. In the wings, one Marnie met another.

“I’m going to cry now,” Ms. Leonard exclaimed. “Please don’t make me cry!”

Then they went out for a bow together.


After the curtain fell, Ms. Hedren was thronged on stage by the cast and crew. Many took photos of her and Ms. Leonard, the two prima donnas. As Ms. Hedren navigated the steeply raked stage with care, Mr. Muhly made her laugh with a story about a tumble he once took while bowing in Paris. She chatted with Arianne Phillips, the costume designer whose bright, mid-century-chic clothes are practically a character in the opera, about another legend, Edith Head, who designed the costumes in the film “Marnie.”

Then it was off to the cast party, near the Met at Lincoln Ristorante. On the way a young woman stopped Ms. Hedren, gushing, and took out her smartphone.

“I never do this,” the woman said apologetically.

Ms. Hedren said, “But you’re going to do this now,” posing for a picture and urging the young woman to visit the website of her preserve, which rescues what she calls “big cats,” including lions and tigers. “It’s shambala.org,” she told the woman.


Ms. Hedren sat at a table at the party and nursed a glass of red wine.

She was the guest of Andrew J. Martin-Weber, a member of the Met’s board who was the lead donor for the opera.

“I thought: Who would be the coolest date to have at the opening of ‘Marnie?’” said Mr. Martin-Weber, a supporter of new works. So he called her up and Ms. Hedren agreed to fly from her home in California for the premiere.

She was still there after midnight. But she had little rest ahead.

“We’ll leave this party, go up and sleep for about four or five hours, and get on a plane, because I have an event at the preserve tomorrow with the lions and tigers,” she said. “We decided to get dressed, ready to go on the plane, and then go to sleep. So when I finish here, I’ll go and pack everything up, and put on my jeans and T-shirt.”



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/22/arts ... ctionfront