A few months ago it was the Royal Opera who were ruffling musical feathers with their wonderfully outrageous assessment of modern mores and contemporary malaise as seen through the bizarre life of Anna Nicole Smith.<\/p>\n
Now it\u2019s the English National Opera\u2019s turn, with a dark and undoubtedly controversial probe into the cyberworld and the murkier depths of the internet.
\nAnd, after the recent much-publicised arrest of a reclusive Essex teenager accused of hacking into Government websites, there is an eerie prescience about this extraordinary world premiere.<\/p>\n
The young American composer Nico Muhly\u2019s complex and often compelling new opera was inspired by a real-life internet crime in Manchester, where two boys were convicted of attempted murder and incitement to murder after the discovery of an elaborate series of chatroom dialogues.
\nMuhly\u2019s opera – with a subtly idiomatic libretto by playwright and screenwriter Craig Lucas – chillingly follows a woman detective\u2019s investigation after a teenage boy is stabbed.
\nIs it attempted murder – or a weird internet pact? Agatha Christie it ain\u2019t. ENO had warned that the work was unsuitable for under-16s, containing scenes of graphic sex and language that might offend.<\/p>\n
Well, yes, there\u2019s a fair amount of sexual content, including scenes of masturbation. But it\u2019s never gratuitous and always dramatically credible.
\nPerhaps the real shock (for this internet-innocent, at least) is the insidious lure of the virtual world \u2014 a realm of fantasy, duplicity and obsession.
\nDirector Bartlett Sher\u2019s assured staging \u2014 a co-production with New York\u2019s Met \u2014 claustrophobically captures this geeky, multi-faceted cyberworld with minimalist sets and brilliant video projections.<\/p>\n
But the real revelation of the evening is Muhly\u2019s score. It\u2019s his first opera, and the vocal and orchestral writing is rich and accessible.
\nThere are certainly hints of his mentor, Philip Glass, but the choral interludes are strangely reminiscent of Benjamin Britten.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s persuasively played under conductor Rumon Gamba, and a fine cast is led convincingly by Susan Bickley\u2019s bemused detective and Nicky Spence as the teenage suspect, Brian.
\nThe evening sometimes \u2014 perhaps inevitably \u2014 seems a little static. But it\u2019s undoubtedly an opera for our time. I shall be reading my e-mails rather more closely in future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few months ago it was the Royal Opera who were ruffling musical feathers with their wonderfully outrageous assessment of modern mores and contemporary malaise as seen through the bizarre life of Anna Nicole Smith. Now it\u2019s the English National Opera\u2019s turn, with a dark and undoubtedly controversial probe into the cyberworld and the murkier […]<\/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\/2998"}],"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=2998"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3000,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2998\/revisions\/3000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}