”Marnie’ Screams For Operatic Treatment,’ Writes Nico Muhly, Who Explains How He Gave It One

In this essay the composer talks about why he and librettist Nicholas Wright worked from Winston Graham’s novel rather than the Hitchcock film, how he set a psychiatrist’s session and a fox hunt for the stage, and how to deploy English National Opera’s chorus. (Favorite line, about “the Marnettes”: “The effect should be as if her inner monologue is actually a warped recording of the Tallis Scholars singing a single chord from an obscure Tudor motet.”)