Marilyn (opera)

Marilyn, subtitled Scenes from the '50s in two acts, is an opera by Lorenzo Ferrero set to a bilingual libretto by Floriana Bossi and the composer. The text consists of a collection of fragments taken from original political, social and cultural documents and has two different linguistic levels: English for the sung parts (entrusted exclusively to four characters), and the language of the country in which the performance takes place for the spoken parts.

Set in two spaces, one of which represents the personal life of Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) and the other which depicts moments of American political and civic life, the story interweaves the myth and decline of the movie star up to her mysterious death, with accounts of significant past events: the Korean war, the McCarthy era investigations, the prosecution of Wilhelm Reich, and the lectures of Timothy Leary on the use of psychedelic drugs. Marilyn is seen as an involuntary victim of the mass culture of her time, a figure only superficially serene and optimistic, a heroine in spite of herself, whose contradictory personality is represented in twelve scenes, equally distributed in the two acts.

The music is a mixture of styles and the theme itself suggest an Italian version of post-modernism. Neo-tonal materials, already adumbrating the synthesis of 19th-century opera and postwar popular music typical of his later works, are mixed with modernist orchestral textures.

The opera was first performed at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma on 23 February 1980. Following the Rome premiere conducted by Gianluigi Gelmetti and directed by Maria Francesca Siciliani, the work had several subsequent new productions: in Germany for documenta, at the Staatstheater Kassel on 18 June 1982, conducted by Alexander Sander; in Finland, at the Vaasa theatre on 14 January 1993, conducted by Martti Tiainen. That production was revived on 31 October 1995 at the Finnish National Theatre.

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