Summary: Composer Nico Muhly has worked in the traditional world of music (The New York Philharmonic) and in the modern music world (Bjork). His latest project, the opera Two Boys, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera this week — and it sits comfortably in both realms. The work is based on a true life tale of hidden identity and tragedy that started on the internet and spilled over into real life. Muhly recognized that there’s something both modern and operatic about that story. Now 32, he is the youngest composer the Met has ever commissioned. Hear Nico Muhly speak with Soundcheck host John Schaefer about Two Boys — and read our review of the opera. Interview Highlights Nico Muhly, on adapting a tragic internet story to a tragic opera: [This story of hidden identity] reminds me of so much of opera. Cosi fan tutte, which is playing at the Met now, is a great example….You have a sort of vague idea that using a costume will help you know something more true about someone you love. And then of course, zooming out a little bit, it’s more true about your own self, more true about your own feelings and your ability to express them. On introducing a modern spin on the grand opera idea of the chorus: We realized that instead of having the chorus be sort of neighborhood gossips or townspeople, they could be the voices of online. What that enabled us to do was take advantage again of the scale of the thing so that you could understand that even if you’re living a very internal and lonesome existence in a kind of hideous suburb in the north of England, when it’s grey and cold and dreary, there is the possibility of this sort of digital beauty. On incorporating the true story of Megan Meier, a teenage girl lured into suicide online: We see the entire projected text that was said… by [Megan Meier's] next door neighbor’s mother, Lori Drew, this middle-aged woman who basically pretended to be a 16 year old boy to lure her into killing herself. She’s saying, “You should kill yourself. You’re a terrible person.” One of the things that was so shocking to me in the case was that these were witnessed chats. These are things that other people had access to. These are [chats] that other people’s parents had access to. These were people who should have known better.
