LONDON \u2014 The Internet is a vast repository of music, but has it created any of note? The speak-singing of \u201cYou\u2019ve got mail\u201d? The jangle of an instant message? They don\u2019t really cut it as art.<\/p>\n
Enter the young composer Nico Muhly\u2019s opera \u201cTwo Boys,\u201d which had its world premiere at the English National Opera here last week in advance of its arrival at the Metropolitan Opera, which commissioned it, during the 2013-14 season.<\/p>\n
Here, finally, is not merely the music on the Internet, but the music of the Internet: a babble of overlapping fragments, texting as supertitles \u2014 \u201chey,\u201d \u201ci thought i lost u,\u201d \u201cr u there?\u201d\u2014 that\u2019s gorgeous and frustrating, transparent and impenetrable. It may just be a chorus singing it on a stage, each member\u2019s face illuminated by his or her own laptop. But it\u2019s also a vision of what our immense social networks might sound like if we could get outside of them and listen.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, at the third performance of the production, directed by Bartlett Sher, it was clear that Mr. Muhly, at 29, writing his first full-length opera, has done just that: been inside and outside, both an active participant in our culture and a detached observer of it. It is the delicate balance of every great piece of art, and \u201cTwo Boys\u201d is Mr. Muhly\u2019s best work yet.<\/p>\n
Based on events that occurred in Manchester, England, in 2003, the opera\u2019s libretto, by the playwright Craig Lucas, has the propulsion of a police procedural. The obligatory seen-it-all officer is Detective Inspector Anne Strawson, who is investigating an attempted murder: a teenager has stabbed a slightly younger boy.<\/p>\n
In the course of her investigation, it becomes clear that things are \u2014 cue the \u201cLaw & Order\u201d deadbolt clang \u2014 more complicated than they seemed. The credulous, well-meaning older boy, Brian, says he committed the assault under orders from shadowy figures with whom he would chat on the Internet.<\/p>\n
Strangely enough, he is telling the truth, but it is gradually revealed that the whole thing has actually been orchestrated by the younger boy, Jake, who played the entire cast of goading characters, seducing and maddening Brian to incite his own murder. Jake wanted, it seems, the same things people have always wanted from the Internet: sexual excitement, a cure for loneliness, to experiment with different personalities. \u201cTo be loved,\u201d the chorus adds at the end. \u201cTo be remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Without using electronic instruments, Mr. Muhly has created a world immersed in technology; his sound palette is Britten, not \u201cTron.\u201d There are softly chiming gongs and ethereal winds, lyrical and sinuous strings and sympathetic, Romantic orchestral surges. The second act starts with an eerie, suspended calm punctured by string flourishes that develop into something almost folksy. There are foreboding minor-key arpeggios throughout, but Mr. Muhly ventures far beyond stock Minimalism. He even creates a new setting for part of the Anglican service; the sound of church music, dense yet floating, permeates the opera.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the choral writing is the work\u2019s most successful element. Touches of old-fashioned ornamentation have been added to Strawson\u2019s straightforward lines to emphasize how technologically primitive she is. (\u201cWhat\u2019s a server?\u201d she asks at one point.) Brian is given to excited exhortations.<\/p>\n
But the solo lines in general blend together, highlighting the cipherish aspect of the opera\u2019s characterizations. Strawson is stereotypically hard-bitten and secretly lonely; Brian is resolutely, utterly ordinary. The plot unfolds, but no one really learns anything or changes. Despite a committed cast (with standout performances by Susan Bickley as Strawson and Nicky Spence as Brian), it is the plot that sweeps us forward, not the characters. The opera\u2019s resistance to neat, redemptive arcs is brave, but something is missing. We know the fact of Jake\u2019s desperate loneliness, for instance, but we never feel its, or his, individuality.<\/p>\n
This is partly a result of Mr. Sher\u2019s efficient but faceless production. The scenes shift with cinematic ease: a conversation that begins in Brian\u2019s bedroom might end seamlessly in Strawson\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
The projections on the looming walls, which help create spaces both real and abstract, are sometimes thrilling, with heart-pounding use of the \u201cfootage\u201d from the crime scene. But the choral interludes are illustrated by images out of an AT&T commercial, networks of light forming and disintegrating. Giant blowups of computer printouts blur and recede risibly during Strawson\u2019s detective work. And Mr. Sher has those stylized projections awkwardly share space with realistic furniture that actors are continually required to move.<\/p>\n
Mr. Sher\u2019s production is at its weakest in one of the opera\u2019s crucial scenes, in which Jake arrives in Brian\u2019s bedroom to proposition him. The blocking is dull and uncertain, with much of the action obscured by a desk. Since the scene\u2019s complex mix of emotions \u2014 disgust, shame, love \u2014 motivates the climax of the opera, our lack of a clear sense of what has happened lessens the work\u2019s eventual impact and our sense of these characters as people.<\/p>\n
That so much emotion remains is largely because of Mr. Muhly, whose music is suffused with feeling and free of moral judgments. It is odd that the English National Opera has billed \u201cTwo Boys\u201d as a \u201ccautionary tale\u201d about the Internet, when the opera represents online life more ambiguously, as a space of utter possibility, and Jake\u2019s plot as a creative act. He plans to die, hoping that \u201ceveryone will say what a beautiful voice I had.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is the wish of any artist. In his program biography Mr. Muhly describes himself as \u201ca former boy chorister\u201d; it can\u2019t be coincidence that Jake, too, is a choirboy and, like Mr. Muhly, a prodigy who loves to interact on his computer. Jake\u2019s mother could be referring to Mr. Muhly when she describes her son: \u201cHe\u2019s more grown-up than anyone I know.\u201d<\/p>\n
The opera derives much of its power from this intensely personal quality. \u201cTwo Boys\u201d has much to do with being an artist \u2014 an individual \u2014 and the way society makes it possible (and impossible) to create, showing the disturbing roads creativity can travel. Its characters could perhaps be more vividly drawn, its production clearer, but it richly fulfills the promise of opera: an entertainment of ideas. For once, you leave the theater talking not about whether the soprano has hit her high notes but about a work\u2019s themes, its relevance to our lives.<\/p>\n
Serious and radiant, \u201cTwo Boys\u201d is a landmark in the career of an important artist. Confidently staking his claim to the operatic tradition, Mr. Muhly has added to it a work of dark beauty. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LONDON \u2014 The Internet is a vast repository of music, but has it created any of note? The speak-singing of \u201cYou\u2019ve got mail\u201d? The jangle of an instant message? They don\u2019t really cut it as art. Enter the young composer Nico Muhly\u2019s opera \u201cTwo Boys,\u201d which had its world premiere at the English National Opera […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2990"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2992,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2990\/revisions\/2992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}