Marilyn: Scenes from the '50s in two acts, is an opera by Lorenzo Ferrero set to a bilingual libretto by Floriana Bossi and the composer.
[1] 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.
[3] 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.
Marilyn calls Doctor Johnson on the phone and talks about her irrational fears of going insane, her feelings of loneliness, emptiness, and depersonalization.
A group of poets of the Beat Generation gather around Allen Ginsberg in the smoky atmosphere of an underground cellar where Bebop music is played.