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[Met Performance] CID:355077

United States Premiere, New Production, Commission

Two Boys
Metropolitan Opera House, Mon, October 21, 2013
Broadcast

Debut : Christopher Bolduc, Andrew Pulver, Juan José de León, Maria D'Amato, Sarah Mostov, Hofesh Shechter, Nicol Scott







Peter Stenhouse for 59 Productions
Commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera
Originally commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program with support from the Francis Goelet Trusts and the Ford Foundation
Broadcast live on Metropolitan Opera Radio Sirius XM channel 74
Streamed at metopera.org
A co-production of the Metropolitan Opera and English National Opera
Production photos by Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Two Boys received seven performances this season.

FUNDING:
The production a gift of the Francis Goelet Trusts
Additional funding from Dr. Coco Lazaroff

Review 1:

Review of Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times

Connections in an Amorphous World

Nico Muhly's "Two Boys" Makes Its American Debut at the Met

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 comes through consistently in his opera "Two Boys," a dark, ambitious and innovative work that had its much anticipated American premiere on Monday night at the Metropolitan Opera. With a libretto by the acclaimed playwright Craig Lucas the opera, based on real events 10 years ago in Manchester, England, tells the story of a 16-year-old boy who nearly killed a younger boy - egged on, the attacker claimed, by mysterious people he encountered in an Internet chat room.

Commissioned by the Met, "Two Boys" was given its premiere in London in a co-production with the English National Opera in 2011 and was significantly revised for New York. The director Bartlett Sher's staging, which employs inventive projections and animation from "59 Productions," is suitably fluid, ominous and shadowy. The dreamlike set by Michael Yeargn consists of movable black walls that slide into position and double as projection screens.

Mr. Muhly, just 32, is the youngest composer the Met has ever commissioned. Before "Two Boys," during the James Levine era of more than 40 years, there had been only five commissioned operas at the Met. Mr. Muhly's work originated as part of the company's troubled commissioning partnership with Lincoln Center Theater, begun in 2006. It is the first from that program to be produced. So there has been inordinate pressure on "Two Boys" to be a success. It must have been deeply gratifying for Mr. Lucas and, especially, Mr. Muhly to receive such an ardent ovation at the end on [first] night.

I wish I could say that "Two Boys" is that longed-for success. The score, rich with intriguing harmonies and textural intricacy, shimmers in Mr. Muhly's vivid, subtle orchestration, especially as conducted by the impressive David Robertson. Mr. Muhly has acknowledged many musical influences, including Britten, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, his mentor Philip Glass and even certain complex modernists. With his keen ear, Mr. Muhly is able to fold these inspirations into his own style.

But having a compositional voice is not enough in the elusive form of musical drama that is opera. The score does not sufficiently penetrate the complex emotions and shocking interactions between the characters in this story, set in 2001 Mr. Muhly excels at conveying the obsessive world of Internet chat rooms, a bazaar of masked identities, sexual yearning and fantasies. Several gripping choral episodes depict a frenetic multiplicity of young people mesmerized by their laptops as they communicate. The choristers sing multi-layered babble catchphrases of conversation in chat lingo; sputtering repetitions of "u there u there" delivered like mumbled mantras; collages of muttered phone numbers.

In London, these choral episodes were thought to be musically engrossing but dramatically inert, with rows of people just staring at laptops. For this staging, a roster of dancers has been added, choreographed by Hofesh Shechter. As the choristers sing, the dancers writhe and twist, all undulant slouching with jerky gyrations. The idea is to convey the teeming emotions beneath the numbing chat. I found the dancing distracting and a little forced.

"Two Boys" unfolds like a police procedural. The main character is Anne Strawson, a detective inspector charged with figuring out why the older teenager, Brian, stabbed the 13-year-old, Jake, who is comatose in the hospital. Anne's character was fleshed out after the London premiere and given a more revealing back story. A hard-working, frustrated woman in her 50s, Anne lives with her invalid mother and is loath to face her loneliness. She is essentially computer-illiterate, which is hard to believe of a detective in 2001. But she is mainly reluctant to take on this case because a boy she gave up at birth for adoption would be the same age as Brian.

The excellent mezzo-soprano Alice Coote sings Anne, and her rich, mellow sound and expressive directness are ideal for the role. Still, her part has significant stretches - in overlapping riffs and churning figures in the orchestra, which reveal Mr. Muhly's debt to Minimalism - where Anne sings slow-moving, intoned vocal lines that come across as stiff and plodding, Mr. Muhly too often conveys the drama through murmuring, ritualized episodes rather than activating the words and altering the approach to the vocal writing. I wanted more bursts of conversational dialogue to alternate with the flights of searching lyricism.

The impressive, youthful tenor Paul Appleby gives his all as Brian, a young man struggling with his sexuality who feels oppressed by his well-meaning parents (here, Maria Zifchak and Kyle Pfortmiller) and seeks refuge in chat rooms, where he can connect with other rootless youths and be what they want him to be. The person who first draws him into the world of Jake appears to be Jake's older sister, Rebecca, a tough-talking temptress sung here with brash coolness by the soprano Jennifer Zetlan.

Though Jake does have an older sister, she is actually a mousy young woman who keeps running away from home. It turns out that the lonely, gay and hurting Jake has surrounded himself with a made-up roster of manipulating figures, including the sexually bold Rebecca, a maniacal "Aunt" Fiona (Sandra Piques Eddy) and a depraved and dangerous gardener, Peter (Keith Miller).

Anne, the detective, finally realizes that Jake lured Brian into carrying out the horrific attack. Both the music and Mr. Lucas's libretto are fairly convincing at taking us inside the mind of the troubled Jake, with his suicidal wish. And it is poignant to see two personifications of Jake. There is the idealized teenager, a lonely, good-looking young man who seeks a romantic connection online, sung here by the boyish and solid baritone Christopher Bolduc in his Met debut; then there is the real Jake, a timid, nervous, nerdy 13-year-old, sung achingly by the boy soprano Andrew Pulver.

But the opera never satisfactorily illuminates what drives Brian to go so far as to stab Jake viciously. Whole stretches of Brian's music are impulsive and dynamic, even though he seems too aware and decent to be manipulated into murdering a boy.

To his credit, Mr. Muhly has avoided the obvious in this score. There is none of the cheap melodrama of Neo-Romantic styles that you hear too often in new operas. Mr. Muhly's musical world in this work is dreamy, hazy and strange. There are wondrous passages, especially the final choral scene with all the main characters, invented and real, taking part, with ethereal and shimmering music, reminiscent of a strange church chorale but with jabs of dissonance. Yet the denouement does not feel earned. We are left baffled by this disturbing story.

Over all, though, this was a worthy project for the Met. The opera's subject is topical and important, though anything about the Internet is in danger of becoming dated quickly. Chat rooms are already kind of passé.

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Met careers

• David Robertson [Conductor]
• Paul Appleby [Brian]
• Christopher Bolduc [Jake]
• Alice Coote [Anne Strawson]
• Maria Zifchak [Brian's Mother]
• Kyle Pfortmiller [Brian's Father]
• Caitlin Lynch [Cynthia]
• Jennifer Zetlan [Rebecca]
• Sandra Piques Eddy [Fiona]
• Judith Forst [Anne's mum]
• Keith Miller [Peter]
• Richard Cox [Celebrant]
• Andrew Pulver [Boy soprano]
• Dennis Petersen [Liam]
• Marco Nisticò [Doctor]
• Juan José de León [American Congressional page]
• Noah Baetge [American Congressman]
• Ashley Emerson [American suburban girl]
• Anne Nonnemacher [American suburban mom]
• Maria D'Amato [American suburban mom]
• Sarah Mostov [Goth girl]
• Bartlett Sher [Production]
• Michael Yeargan [Set Designer]
• Catherine Zuber [Costume Designer]
• Donald Holder [Lighting Designer]
• Hofesh Shechter [Choreographer]
• Leo Warner [Production/Animation]
• Mark Grimmer [Production/Animation]
• Nicol Scott [Production/Animation]
• Peter Stenhouse [Production/Animation]
• 59 Productions [Production/Animation]