A Broken Record? A Feminist Exploration of Mary Magdalene in Music

Mary Magdalene has long since been associated with music and musicality for as long as her story has been performed. This chapter explores how she became a byword for female sexuality in reception, focusing specifically on music for a general audience. It takes four case studies—Wagner’s Parsifal, Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, Jesus Christ Superstar and FKA twigs’ MAGDALENE—to analyze how the presence of patriarchal myth regarding the Magdalene became so pervasive. It makes the case that such musical reception for a modern and nonreligious audience need not be in itself a corrective in order to make a constructive contribution to cultural discourse. By offering a new stimulus for revisiting old assumptions, the presence of Mary Magdalene in music can keep critical questions alive beyond the domain of the feminist biblical scholar.