Nico Muhly’s first opera may have its origins in a true story from Manchester in 2003, but, as presented in Craig Lucas’s libretto, Two Boys seems far removed from any kind of hard-edged reality. Commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, but being trialled by English National Opera, the opera unfolds the whole rather [...]
Nico Muhly’s opera Two Boys, an exploration of the internet’s impact on communications as depicted in the tragic story of two teenagers, opened at English National Opera on Friday. The story, loosely based on real events which took place in a Northern British industrial city, sees two boys become intertwined in a dark web world [...]
A teenage stabbing, internet chatrooms and cybersexual predators: Nico Muhly’s Two Boys has all the ingredients of social malaise that promise to make a copybook opera for our times. For those who believe opera should engage with contemporary issues, Muhly’s work, to a libretto by Craig Lucas, ticks most of the boxes. Loosely based on [...]
Reality blurred by fantasy, teen sexuality, Internet chatrooms, a murky murder plot — it’s not a new HBO drama, it’s the disquieting and absorbing first opera from composer Nico Muhly. The John Adams-esque minimalism-meets-romanticism score of “Two Boys” has immediate appeal, rare in new opera, but for all the smart handling of contempo themes, the [...]
LONDON: Based on a true story: A teenager stabs a younger boy outside a shopping mall in an English suburb. A lonely detective unravels a series of fake identities and Internet intrigues, gradually obsessing more and more over the case. The latest HBO crime drama? CSI: Manchester? Not quite. It’s the young composer Nico Muhly’s [...]
If the film “The Social Network” lifted the veil on the ingenuity and intrigue behind Internet networking, the opera “Two Boys” which had its premiere on Friday focuses on what it’s like to be trapped inside the web. Over the span of 110 minutes, American composer Nico Muhly and librettist Craig Lucas take the audience [...]
Having worked in film, pop and classical music, Muhly is one of the most versatile and exciting talents in music today, which is why he was chosen by the English National Opera and New York’s Metropolitan Opera House to collaborate with the writer Craig Lucas on this work which had its world premiere in London [...]
Minimalism, electronic fusion, and early English choral music don’t generally sit together comfortably within the same sentence, still less on the same classical disc. That fact alone makes Seeing Is Believing worth a listen, aside from these superb performances. Twenty-nine-year-old American composer Nico Muhly has an extraordinary CV for his age. Achievements include works being [...]
“The nature of being a composer is being alone, and collaboration is a natural way to interact with people that’s both work and play,” he says. “I have to say that my favourite collaborator is always my most recent one. I’m doing a thing right now for Jo?nsi again, he’s great; I’m doing another set of things with Antony [Hegarty], who’s great … I don’t know, I love everybody.”
James Jolly talks to one of the US’s hottest musical properties A Good Understanding (Decca) I Drink the Air Before Me (Decca) Nico Muhly, not yet 30, is one of the most talked-about musicians of his generation. His musical sympathies range from working with artists as diverse as Björk, Philip Glass, Grizzly Bear and Antony [...]