Q&A: Nico Muhly

THEATER there an internal bit to you, or do you only exist how you’re perceived?” That’s something we all deal with. The thing that people know about artists is their work, and then you interpret internal, psychological things. So, in a sense, the answer is “no” and “totally.” What about your personal listening habits these days? When I’m in the middle of writing music, I try not to listen to things I’m going to get too interested in. I’ll listen to what I know, to be in a familiar landscape. But you have to cook to Paul Simon’s Graceland. Maybe The Rhythm Q&A: of the Saints. But let’s not get hysterical. Some operagoers may be surprised that you’re not just shut in with Anglican hymns or John Adams operas. Critics NICO MUHLY even seem irritated that they can’t force you into a specific genre. How do With his new opera, Marnie, the queer composer takes you react to that? #MeToo to the Met. In a weird way, the death of record stores was a good thing. I spent half of my life at Tower Records on 66th Photography by RICHARD GILLIGAN Street, but I think taxonomies can be useful if everything’s dead. It was like porn going into that glassed-in DON’T PIGEONHOLE Ni c o Mu h ly. are foregrounded in all three of Muhly’s What about Marnie seemed fitting for classical room, within which—for the The 37-year-old, Vermont-born operas. Dark Sisters (2011) followed an opera? really freaky people—was opera. Cross composer’s third opera, Marnie, women struggling with the oppres- So much of theater and opera is Jacket by John Varvatos. referencing is so much more interesting. based on the 1961 Winston Graham sive patriarchy of the Fundamentalist about what happens when you lie. Shirt by Ziggy Chen Take the work I’ve done with Sam novel previously adapted by Alfred Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Sometimes the lie can be simple; Amidon. I don’t know where you’d put Hitchcock, takes inspiration, in part, Saints, while Two Boys (2011)—which sometimes it can be a disguise. I that in Tower Records. And where does from Muhly’s decades-long obsession critic Wayne Koestenbaum praised immediately thought that Marnie Laurie Anderson go? If Laurie doesn’t with the Renaissance choral tradition as “an incredible coup for outrageous would be an amazing story because usual. How do you dramatize Marnie’s million notes, and haven’t watched it have a house there, I’m not interested. but also from American minimalists queer thinking”—focused on the the whole point is that we never terrorization? again. The novel is set in England in the It’s not that all music is genre-free, like Philip Glass, for whom he worked relationship between two teenage boys know who Marnie is. She exists, Tippi Hedren gave this extraordinary late ’50s as opposed to the ’60s, which but everyone is from somewhere, while studying literature at Columbia navigating the liberating and libidi- quite explicitly, in the male gaze, interview about Hitchcock assaulting opened up a lot more possibilities for and that doesn’t change. I’m from University and composition at nous world of internet chat rooms. The and is constantly the victim of—or her during the production of the movie, me. The ’50s setting makes Marnie’s the classical tradition, but that Juilliard. That he has also collaborated title character in Marnie is a mystery, manipulating—that, and it’s not and Michael came up with this idea that forward-seeming psychoanalysis doesn’t mean I can’t have a good time with Usher, Anohni, The National, and as much to the audience as to herself, until she gets caught by [her boss] Marnie is menaced by what could be session much more curious, and having elsewhere. It’s about fluency, and a myriad other artists—while somehow despite the tendency of the men in her that it becomes quite clear what the visible or invisible men dressed up in that take place in England makes it even mother tongue. When you venture finding time to write for television life to constantly assert their knowledge consequences of all these disguises the costumes of the period. It doesn’t more outrageous. into something else, you bring things and film, including the score for The of and control over her. Directed by are, but also how she can use that matter if they’re people in the street, home. But in the record store world, Reader (2008)—may surprise many at Michael Mayer (A Home at the End of awareness against him. I thought that in the office, or inside her—or our— Do you see yourself mirrored in the you’d never be able to connect me as the Metropolitan Opera this October, the World), the coproduction with the was a really powerful topic for an head. There is this sense of her as prey, opera? the arranger of a song on a Grizzly Bear when Marnie has its U.S. premiere. English National Opera brings psycho- opera and a vehicle to talk about more existing inside the language of male Not really. This opera was easier to write album and the person who wrote that It shouldn’t though, as his musical logical complexity and high drama to complicated things. hunger and violence. because I wasn’t dealing with things weirdo piece for orchestra, two floors up genre-hopping has always enriched his the opera stage, prompting audiences happening in my own life, with people in the sex room. classical work. to analyze alongside Marnie the iron- With the #MeToo movement, this In many ways, though, the opera is my own age—as with Two Boys. But, Stifled desire and the impediments fisted systems that surround them. story makes the Metropolitan Opera quite distinct from the film. in the first act, Marnie’s constantly Marnie opens at the Metropolitan that restrict expressions of self-identity —CHARLES SHAFAIEH seem much more au courant than I watched the movie in 2014, took a asking, “Why are you how you are? Is Opera October 19. STYLING BY MARC ANTHONY GEORGE ANTHONY MARC BY STYLING 78 SEPTEMBER 2018 O U T OUT SEPTEMBER 2018 79.

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