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Muhly’s Two Boys An Enigma

Robert Levine

Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, NY; October 30th, 2013—We now all agree that the Internet can be used sordidly and cruelly, but Nico Muhly’s Two Boys, which opened at the Met a couple of weeks ago, looks at it as it was in the year 2000 in a dreary industrial town in England. Chat-rooms (a now-outdated term) invited anonymity as well as dangerous fantasy behavior from individuals who were out of touch with real people around them. And who could stop it?

Two Boys, with a libretto by Craig Lucas, concerns a 16-year-old named Brian who is accused of stabbing a boy (Jake) who he has met online; Jake remains in a coma. A detective (Anne) is assigned to the case but she can find no motive; she herself gave up her child for adoption and this senseless event has made her wonder what may have happened to him. Brian tells Anne that online he has met the wealthy and lovely Rebecca, 17, her 13-year-old genius brother, Jake (who “knows too much”), their “Aunt” Fiona, a professional spy who wants Jake killed, and Peter, an insane gardener and private assassin in Fiona’s employ who, as the story unfolds, rapes and murders Rebecca.

Reading the transcripts of the chats Anne realizes that this outlandish cast of characters is real—and that sets her to wondering how and why Brian stabbed Jake and, moreover, what sort of horrendous and difficult-to-negotiate labyrinth the internet actually is. As it turns out—SPOILER ALERT—young Jake is the villain; he has created the others in order to seduce Brian. There are big murky spots in the libretto, and unfortunately Anne is a weak character with whom it is hard to relate. And the text would not be followable without the Met titles. The opera is presented as a TV police procedural: think Law and Order-SVU, but without a strong police presence—and often without energy.

The production, by Bartlett Sher on Michael Yeargan’s sets, abetted by the projections and animations by 59 Productions, is fascinating. Dozens of characters (the chorus, with plenty to do) sit in front of their laptops in ghostly white light; bits of conversations are heard and seen (white type on dark towers); what can happen in cyberspace seems both infinite and corrupting. It is meant to be disorienting and it is: time jumps back and forth and one loses one’s footing; video projections add to the jumpiness. The sets are dreary-colored—they add to the gloom. The only misstep in the direction/production concerns the unnecessary dancers who writhe about the stage when the chat rooms are full and active; the prancing about is too gimmicky in what already is disturbingly busy.

Muhly writes some beautiful music; the choral moments (a scene in church, to which Brian has gone, invited by “Rebecca”), are stunning. Overlapping polyphony, exclamatory hurling of words (some obscene, others vile: “Why don’t you kill yourself?”), are haunting moments to revel in. The babbling that takes place to show us how vast the internet is can stun. The vocal lines for the individuals are essentially arioso; there are some snatches of melody (and Brian has a full-blown aria), but they are mostly brief. The orchestra creates fine atmosphere. There are hints of Britten—Muhly almost quotes from the Passcaglia from Peter Grimes late in the opera—and more than hints of Philip Glass, with repeated arpeggios. A dark rumbling in the low strings and percussion contrasts with the xylophone.

The singers are all to be commended. Paul Appleby’s tenor and boyish looks are able to convince us that he is a 16-year-old (Appleby is 30); his slouch and attitude are typical of brooding teenagers all over the world, but the voice is a quality lyric. Alice Coote, as Anne, is stuck in a thankless role, and her usually fine mezzo does not carry well enough through the house, although she gains strength in the opera’s second act.

Sandra Piques Eddy, as the nefarious Fiona (of course, merely a figment of Jake’s imagination), is wonderful, her portrayal is vivid. Boy soprano Andrew Pulver as the real Jake is eerily good; his grown-up counterpart, the one Brian chats with on the internet, is Christopher Bolduc, an excellent young baritone. And Keith Miller, as the intensely corrupt (invented) Peter, is graphically cruel. David Robertson conducts with authority.

In all, you leave with the sensation that Muhly is the real thing but that Two Boys is not; the unfocused libretto, with its changing points of view, is a better experiment than result.

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