While watching the new opera Two Boys at the Met, I experienced something like the divided consciousness of an online multitasker, that curious fusion of total absorption and total distraction. In the floating library of cyberspace, as you read one text you are constantly assailed from the sidelines, or through links embedded in the text […]
All composers draw upon various musical styles. Very few are completely original. The challenge is to fashion the diverse influences into a distinctive voice. It is hard to describe what makes a composer’s voice authentic. But you know it when you hear it. Nico Muhly has a voice, a Muhly sound, and it came through […]
I’ve been fighting with the term ‘indie classical’ for a long time,” says Nico Muhly. “I feel like it’s unfair in a lot of directions, but mainly, I just don’t feel very indie. I feel quite institutional at that. My favorite thing to write is church music, and I have an opera at the Met. I have albums of sacred choral music out on Decca. That’s not indie. It’s actually the opposite of indie.”
The brash young composer Nico Muhly – much to the surprise of many but probably not to himself – turned out to be right. When his opera Dark Sisters was premiered in New York City in November, many believed the ever prolific Muhly (yes, even more prolific than his longtime employer Philip Glass) had rushed […]
Is there a similarity between polygamy and same-sex marriage? Is there a common cause among the advocates of both of those controversial life styles? This opera raises that possibility, then drops the subject. It is a missed opportunity. Dark Sisters is a co-commission (and co-production) from the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Gotham Chamber Opera and […]
Composer Nico Muhly is just 30, but has already has three film scores under his belt, numerous commissions with orchestras, has scored ballets for hotter than hot choreographer Benjamin Millepied. Muhly even composed a cantata to Shrunk and White’s grammar bible “The Elements of Style.” The New York based composer, who is no slouch in […]
The plight of women trapped in plural marriage—one husband with multiple wives—glowed like a firebrand on the Perelman Theater stage on Sunday. Opera Company of Philadelphia’s Dark Sisters, in co-production with Gotham Chamber Opera and the Music- Theatre Group, is OCP’s final offering of the 2011-12 season. With every artistic touch, everyspecial effect, the chamber […]
Nico Muhly’s new opera about women in a Mormon polygamist sect, Dark Sisters, opens with a poetic a cappella tableau: five women in nightgowns stand on the red sands of the desert, calling out to their children who have been taken from them by the government. A stormy sky swirls overhead (ironically – and perhaps […]
A thirteen-year-old boy is stabbed, a sixteen-year-old boy taken into custody. “Even senseless crimes makes sense,” pronounces Detective Inspector Anne Strawson. So when the analogue logic of CCTV fails, she sets out into the chaotic chatter of cyberspace, searching for the digital solution to a crime of a technological age. Unfortunately, in Nico Muhly’s debut […]
Nico Muhly had one humble aim for his first opera. He wanted to create an episode of Prime Suspect, he told me last week. “A grand opera that functions as a good night’s entertainment.” There’s no doubt he’s achieved that. Two Boys, receiving its world premiere last night at the English National Opera, is as […]