Robert Marx is President of The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation in New York City. He has worked extensively in theatre and opera as a producer, essayist and consultant, and since 1995 has appeared regularly on the Metropolitan Opera’s Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts as an intermission host, commentator and Opera Quiz panelist.
His many Met programs have ranged from lectures on Wozzeck and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, to extended features on contemporary production issues in opera. His broadcast interview subjects included Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, stage director Robert Wilson, and conductor Valery Gergiev. In recent seasons, Marx has also been affiliated with the Minnesota Opera. His essays have appeared in many national publications, ranging from The New York Times to Opera News, where he was Consulting Editor.
From 1989-99 he was Executive Director of Lincoln Center’s New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, where he created an entirely new institutional format for the archive’s vast collections, exhibitions, and performance programs, with annual attendance reaching 400,000/year. Mr. Marx was also director of the theatre programs at both the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.
His international work included the Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival (presented as part of the 1984 Olympic Games), as well as the Salzburg and Avignon Festivals. Mr. Marx served on the artistic advisory committee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, was Artistic Associate of the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and Co-Producer with Off-Broadway’s Music-Theatre Group. With Theatre For A New Audience, he was Associate Producer on a number of Off-Broadway productions, including Shakespeare’s Troilus & Cressida (directed by Sir Peter Hall), the American premiere of Waste by Harley Granville-Barker (OBIE Award 2000, Best Play, directed by Bartlett Sher), and the first major NYC revival of Edward Bond’s controversial Saved (directed by Robert Woodruff).
