Muhly’s Two Boys
The Met - November 9, 2013
The Met - November 9, 2013
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| Photo credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times |
Lei: Nico Muhly’s new opera, Two Boys, is based on the real criminal case of a disturbed British 14-year old who
choreographed his own (attempted) murder by inducing a 16-year old to stab him.
The murder/suicide is staged through a scheme where the younger boy assumes
more than two dozen different web chat room identities, including a flirty
girl, an M5 spy and a rapist, who enact all sorts of sexual and
psychological harassment on the older boy before finally commissioning him the stabbing. The
opera begins in the aftermath of the action, when we meet up with the detective
who has been assigned the case, and we uncover the story as she does. Much of
the plot details, including its framing devices, are lifted directly out of a
2005 Vanity Fair investigative article.
While this source material is modern and promisingly intriguing, its
Muhly-Lucas adaptation fell short on virtually all levels that to me are the
necessary components of a great opera, namely, enthralling music serving a
cohesive plot, strong dramatic tensions, a meaningful libretto, outstanding
singing and a clever and incisive production.
Lui: To me it fell into the trap of trying to
opera-ify what can’t be opera-ified. Craig Lucas’ libretto had little grasp of
what makes for an effective opera and instead presented too much exposition in
the mouth of its singers, an issue that reminded me of symptoms that plague
other modern operas like Steven Schwartz’s Séance on a Wet Afternoon
(2009). Under no circumstances do we need to hear the female lead sing
repeatedly (I counted at least three times) that she is “Detective Lieutenant
Anne Strawson.” First of all, it sounds ridiculous. And second, even if you
have to insert it once in good faith just to maintain that Law & Order television
police drama trope for reasons of genre, then just do it once. We got it the
first time. She is, after all, the only middle-aged female square on stage
dressed vaguely like a private eye, who does detective-like things behind an archetypal
film-noir, detective-like desk.
Characterization in the narrative economy of opera is generally conveyed by means of a whole series of signs and signals other than explicitly holding the hand of the audience as if they were incapable of reading those signs. Can you imagine if the evil chief of police in Puccini’s Tosca came out and repeatedly sang that he was chief of police Scarpia? It would be ludicrous. In fact, his name is hardly even pronounced once, let alone his title. Yet we still know exactly who he is and precisely what role he plays in the drama. Nevertheless, operas like Two Boys and Schwartz’s Séance relentlessly bombard the audience with an unnatural reiteration of the characters names in ridiculous ways. Over and over again in Séance do we hear Mr. Johnson’s name repeated – there is even an aria with a relentless Mr. Johnson refrain. The operatic intoning of names like Mr. Johnson and Detective Lieutenant Strawson sounds foreign not only to the lexical stylings but also to the narrative technique of opera.
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / The Metropolitan Opera |
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / The Metropolitan Opera |
Characterization in the narrative economy of opera is generally conveyed by means of a whole series of signs and signals other than explicitly holding the hand of the audience as if they were incapable of reading those signs. Can you imagine if the evil chief of police in Puccini’s Tosca came out and repeatedly sang that he was chief of police Scarpia? It would be ludicrous. In fact, his name is hardly even pronounced once, let alone his title. Yet we still know exactly who he is and precisely what role he plays in the drama. Nevertheless, operas like Two Boys and Schwartz’s Séance relentlessly bombard the audience with an unnatural reiteration of the characters names in ridiculous ways. Over and over again in Séance do we hear Mr. Johnson’s name repeated – there is even an aria with a relentless Mr. Johnson refrain. The operatic intoning of names like Mr. Johnson and Detective Lieutenant Strawson sounds foreign not only to the lexical stylings but also to the narrative technique of opera.
The most unfortunate thing about this tactless flaunting of the
conventions of the form in these recent English-language productions is that
people who, for example, don’t understand Italian come away from these shows
thinking that this must be what the experience of understanding one of the
classic operas in Italian must be like. And this couldn’t be further from the
truth, especially since Schwartz and Muhly and his librettist lack the pure
musical, dramatic and literary artistry that the iconic composers of the past
possess.
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| Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera |
Lei: The meaning and poetry of sung words cannot be
overlooked. Libretti and the nuances of the language do matter. Rigoletto could
address the Duke’s court saying “Cortigiani, siete dei disonesti” (“Courtiers,
you are dishonest”) but it will never sound as good as “Cortigiani, vil
razza dannata” (“Courtiers, vile cursed kind”). This is why I personally
cannot have a complete operatic experience if I don’t understand the language
of the work that’s being performed, without the muffling and streamlining
filter of a subtitled translation. And that's precisely what irritates me when Craig Lucas' libretto has the poor singers dramatically declaim stuff like "Even senseless crimes make sense" or else "I am only sixteen / I wake up ang go to school / come home do my homework / have dinner / watch TV". Ordinary language like this may be fine on TV but just sounds stupid when sung in an opera.
Lui: All the buzz around Nico Muhly’s mélange-of-modern-music did not seem to promise the kind of pedantic narrative singing his opera actually delivered. I was expecting to be completely swept away by an avalanche of polyphonic sound approximating the multitude of voices active at any given moment on the Internet. At least this is what the bait-and-switch promotional material emphasized. Though these choral “voices of the Internet” moments were few and far between, this was precisely when I felt the opera had a pulse, that it was most alive.
Despite all the talk about his multiplicity of musical models and
influences, I really wished he would have just gone back to study his Philip
Glass playbook. He could have framed the whole thing through a simple series of
impressionistic musical tableaux, like Satyagraha. The Glassian
narrative musical texture Muhly achieves from time to time could be employed to
convey a kind of meditative Internet droning background against which this
otherwise compelling story could have played out. Rather than follow its Vanity
Fair source material so doggedly, we could have experienced the story as it
actually unfolded, with all of its mystery and intrigue revealed through
impressions.
Lui: All the buzz around Nico Muhly’s mélange-of-modern-music did not seem to promise the kind of pedantic narrative singing his opera actually delivered. I was expecting to be completely swept away by an avalanche of polyphonic sound approximating the multitude of voices active at any given moment on the Internet. At least this is what the bait-and-switch promotional material emphasized. Though these choral “voices of the Internet” moments were few and far between, this was precisely when I felt the opera had a pulse, that it was most alive.
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| Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera |
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / The Metropolitan Opera |
There’s no harm in wearing your influences on your sleeve and
Philip Glass’ minimalism with its infinite layering of nuance and complexity is
exactly what this story called for with its boy genius conjuring up layer after
layer of phony characters and fake avatars to dupe a poor unexpecting soul into
strange sexual encounters and eventually murder. It seems to me that Muhly
could have built layer upon layer of musical deception and intrigue, until the
whole orchestration climaxes with the narrative and
its ambiguous but unequivocally tragic denouement. In short, anything to avoid the prattling on of the
detective and her mother, who only serve to muddy the thrust
of the real drama and dilute the soundscape.
Lei: For the most part there was no real singing but rather unnecessary dramatic declamations that sounded forced and stupid. English is not the most musical language, even more so when it’s used in this way. I counted too few exceptions to this anti-melodic singing pattern, starting with the “bait-and-switch” choral Internet scenes with their tense chaotic and daunting musicality. Additionally, mezzo-soprano Alice Coote did not have much to work with throughout the opera, since she mostly proclaimed in operatic voice lines like “Do you speak chat?” or “People in ether, where do I find them?” However, when her character has a breakthrough moment in the final scene, Muhly finally gives her a musical aria worthy of such name, and she sang it beautifully. Although the most impressive true singing was performed by treble Andrew Pulver performing the “real” boy (as opposed to his chat room fake identities) orchestrating his own murder.
The purity, musicality and piercing strength of Pulver’s voice
made me immediately think of Alessandro Moreschi, the last castrato (and the
only one who made it to live recording). I’ve always been puzzled by why castrati were the
ultimate operatic phenomenon back in the 1700s, never really understanding what
was so hot in a grown man singing with a little boy’s voice. After hearing
Andrew Pulver and imagining his voice transposed in an adult male with
extraordinary lungpower and mature artistic expressivity, I realized for the
first time why castrati were the Netrebkos of their time. A singer like
Farinelli was the rare phenomenon of a delicate voice capable of tackling
gender-bending roles with incredible power and agility (castrati portrayed both
sexes on stage), delivering experiences that were both unsettling and
inexplicably viscerally beautiful.
Lei: For the most part there was no real singing but rather unnecessary dramatic declamations that sounded forced and stupid. English is not the most musical language, even more so when it’s used in this way. I counted too few exceptions to this anti-melodic singing pattern, starting with the “bait-and-switch” choral Internet scenes with their tense chaotic and daunting musicality. Additionally, mezzo-soprano Alice Coote did not have much to work with throughout the opera, since she mostly proclaimed in operatic voice lines like “Do you speak chat?” or “People in ether, where do I find them?” However, when her character has a breakthrough moment in the final scene, Muhly finally gives her a musical aria worthy of such name, and she sang it beautifully. Although the most impressive true singing was performed by treble Andrew Pulver performing the “real” boy (as opposed to his chat room fake identities) orchestrating his own murder.
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| Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera |
Lui: I wonder if the beautifully ambiguous voice of the boy wasn’t part of the point. Even though the little boy is only a kid of something like twelve or thirteen, one theme of the multifaceted story seems to be the difficulties one faces, not so much as they accept, but rather as they attempt to impose their sexuality on someone else. Though the homosexual issues of the pre-teen sexual predator are never really made explicit, since he remains a ghostly figure and his characterization both musically and in terms of casting, remains so deceptively naive, not only to the audience, but also to his parents, we are nevertheless not sure what to make of him. He is a haunting specter, extremely effective.
Lei: The plot stressed the wrong issues. It could have been about the perverse anonymity of the Internet allowing multiple identities, pre-pubescent sexual confusion and disconnect between virtual and real world. All these themes, however, were just in the background and not really fleshed out. The driving force and connecting narrative thread was instead the detective, with her inability to understand web dynamics, her personal drama of having chosen a career over a child she gave up for adoption, her commiserating over unsupervised troubled adolescents and her live-in petulant old mother (who offers some unnecessary comic relief).
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| Photo credit: The Metropolitan Opera |
Lui: Though it is billed as a story about the
pitfalls of human connection in the time of the early Internet, my impression
is that they opted to tell a sociological parable about the importance of
family values. Sure the murder plot line revolves around the unbridled fantasy
land of the World Wide Web, but most of the characters in the story hardly even
know what a computer is. What links all three or four of the main story lines
is the disintegration of family values, the inevitable oversights of working
class parents, the choice of career over parenthood, the trials and
tribulations of caring for the family you do have, the alienation of the
younger generation from their inattentive parents, and the hands-off parenting
styles of well-meaning mothers who have no particular knack for raising
children. More than the Internet it’s a story about the current state of family
life in the modern working class suburbs.
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| Photo credit: Ken Howard / The Metropolitan Opera |
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| Photo credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times |
Lui: Why was there no attempt to deconstruct and
play with all the chat room shorthand that is peppered throughout the libretto?
Muhly’s style seems to be perfectly suited to defamiliarizing Internet
abbreviations by turning them into the code language they appear to be: reading
out the letters or riffing on the pure sounds of them. Instead what he gave us,
both in terms of the text and his treatment of it, was an overly sincere
attempt to sound “young” and “fresh” to millennials and an all too earnest use
of slang, directly declaiming the Internet lingo for exactly what it means. The
result is that both the libretto and the music’s embodiment of it felt flat and
came across too often as just silly. Despite my frustration with the surface
of the show, I could feel the seriousness of the underlying story, as well as
the overarching sense that a thriller packing a fourth quarter payoff was boiling
just beneath that surface. So I was absolutely willing to give it credit and I
most certainly did not write it off beforehand. In fact, I wanted it to redeem
my faith in contemporary opera. I was ready to be wowed by modernity at the
Met. I wanted to see the stodgy institution that I love so much taken by storm.
Nothing would make me happier!
Lei: All in all underwhelming, boring and at times also plain irritating, I had to make an effort to sit through to the end. While Muhly proved himself an impressive composer, an opera needs much more than just great music to be truly complete and worth seeing.
Lei: All in all underwhelming, boring and at times also plain irritating, I had to make an effort to sit through to the end. While Muhly proved himself an impressive composer, an opera needs much more than just great music to be truly complete and worth seeing.
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| Photo credit: Ángel Franco/The New York Times |
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