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American composer Marvin David Levy was born in Passaic, New Jersey on 2 August 1932. He studied piano with Carl Friedberg at Juilliard and composition with Philip James at New York University and Otto Luening at Columbia University.
His 1959 oratorio For the Time Being, setting W H Auden, was performed and recorded at Carnegie Hall.
He was best known for his opera Mourning Becomes Electra, first performed at New York Metropolitan Opera in 1967. A revised version was performed at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1998.
Recordings of some of Marvin Levy's music were issued on CD in 2004 as part of the Naxos Milken Archive of American Jewish Music.
Levy died in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on 9 February 2015, aged eighty-two.