Artist Profile
mel Marvin has maintained an active and successful career as a composer of music for theater and opera for over 50 years. He is well known as a prolific artist with a wide range of ability, and his body of work – so far – includes scores for 30 works of musical theater, 47 plays, 3 films and 3 operas. His work as a director encompasses operas, plays and musicals. He has also been, for many years, an Arts Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he is Head Composer and Director of Production at the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program.
On Broadway: Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas with book and lyrics by longtime collaborator Timothy Mason, is one of six musicals he originally wrote for Minneapolis’s Children’s Theatre Company and for his daughter, Kate. He received two Tony nominations as a co-author of Tintypes, wrote the music for the Broadway productions of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Yentl and Christopher Durang’s A History of the American Film, co-conceived and arranged The Gershwins’ Fascinating Rhythm, and wrote the score for Shakespeare’s Cymbeline at Lincoln Center Theater. ( In a panic-inducing coincidence, Cymbeline and The Grinch opened on Broadway on the same night.)
Off-Broadway: His many productions include The Portable Pioneer and Prairie Show, Variety Obit, Sybille Pearson’s True History and Real Adventures, Marvin’s Garden and Prizewinning Plays at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Legs at Musical Theatre Works, Das Lusitania Songspiel (with Chris Durang and Sigourney Weaver), Polly, The Prince of Homburg, Lincoln, and Green Pond at Chelsea Theatre Center, and Measure for Measure at Lincoln Center Theater.
At regional theatres, Mel has served as composer or director of scores of productions, including The Mark Taper Forum, where he was an associate artist and wrote the original music for the world premiere production of both parts of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America; Hartford Stage Company (where he wrote the music for many of Mark Lamos’s Shakespeare productions); Lincoln Center Theater; Arena Stage; The Guthrie Theater (where he most recently wrote a new incidental score for Hamlet); American Repertory Theatre; St. Louis Repertory Theatre; Arizona Theatre Company; Ford’s Theatre; The Old Globe; and La Jolla Playhouse.
As a director, his work includes both classical and contemporary plays as well as a focus on new opera. He also directed the world premiere of Josh Rosenblum and Joanne Lessner’s musical, Fermat’s Last Tango, at the York Theater Company. He co-directed, with Charles Haid, The Last Supper, a short film that won the Environmental Film Festival Award.
Opera became Mel’s focus later in his career, and he made his debut as an opera composer in 2004 with two works, both written with librettist Jonathan Levi. Guest from the Future, commissioned by Nine Circles Chamber Theatre, premiered at the Bard Summerscape Festival in August, 2004, and Buwalsky, A Road Opera, commissioned by Holland’s Opera Spanga, premiered in The Netherlands then toured in the U.S. the same year, including performances at Yale’s Iseman Theatre and NYU’s Skirball Center. Levi and Marvin’s new work, Truth and Reconciliation, premiered at NYC’s Opera America in January 2020.