Nico Muhly: Two Boys

Disc: 1 1. Prologue & Scene 1 (Alley/Police Station): Help! Help! My friend has been stabbed! 2. Scene 2 (Hospital): You understand your son had no pulse... 3. Scene 3 (Police Station): Brian? I'm detective Sargeant Strawson 4. Scene 4 (Brian's Bedroom): Chorus: U there? / Who is this? 5. Scene 5 (Police Station): I'm not! / Brian. There are witnesses 6. Scene 6 (Brian's Bedroom): Brian?... Church in ten minutes... Chorus: How are u? 7. Scene 7 (Church): Amen... O Lord, open thou our lips 8. Scene 8 (Brian's House): Has Brian been in trouble before? 9. Scene 9 (Police Station): Copy of the security tape from the shopping centre 10. Scene 10 (Anne's Flat): You should see this boy they've stuck me with 11. Scene 11 (Police Station): No one else goes in or out... You stabbed him 12. Scene 12 (Brian's Bedroom): Brian...You don't know me... Chorus: Can't stop talking 13. Scene 13 (Hallway): "That's for d**n sure" 14. Scene 14 (Interview Room/Brian's Room): You searched for Rebecca... 15. Scene 15 (Hospital): Mrs. Wilson? / I know he hears us 16. Scene 16 (Police Station): The transcripts from the server Disc: 2 1. Scene 1 (Police Station): Even senseless crimes make sense 2. Scene 2 (Police Station): Told you. You think I'm smart enough... Chorus: [Grocery items] 3. Scene 3 (Brian's Bedroom): It had to be done... I'm sure you understand 4. Scene 3 (Brian's Bedroom): I have to see you! / Ur in danger 5. Scene 3 (Brian's Bedroom): Trick or treat! 6. Scene 3 (Brian's Bedroom): Hey... I knew you wouldn't believe 7. Scene 3 (Brian's Bedroom): Chorus: I saw u in algebra... 8. Scene 4 (Police Station): Did you have sex? 9. Scene 5 (Brian's Bedroom): Brian... I have a proposition 10. Scene 6 (Police Station): You refused / He was my friend! 11. Scene 7 (Anne's Flat) & Scene 8 (Police Station): Mother!... Are you all right? 12. Scene 9 (Brian's Bedroom): What's up? / U updated your photo 13. Scene 10 (Police Station): You taking the p**s? / Maybe not 14. Scene 11 (Brian's Bedroom): If I'm not at the doctor 15. Scene 12 (Alley): Do what I say / Okay 16. Scene 13 (Police Station): Thank you, Brian. Do you understand what's happened to you? 17. Scene 14 (Hospital): Detective, this is my daughter, Rebecca... Chorus: Kill urself 18. Scene 14 cont'd (Police Station): And there they are-Rebecca. Fiona. Peter... Nonesuch releases Nico Muhly s opera Two Boys, recorded live during the Metropolitan Opera s 2013 production with conductor David Robertson and director Bartlett Sher. The two-act opera, which features a libretto by award-winning playwright Craig Lucas, is loosely based on true events and follows a lonely detective whose investigation of a seemingly simple crime draws her into a complex web of online intrigue. Alice Coote sings the role of Detective Inspector Anne Strawson and Paul Appleby sings Brian, the 16-year-old boy at the center of her investigations. The cast also features Jennifer Zetlan as Rebecca, Caitlin Lynch as Cynthia, Sandra Piques Eddy as Fiona, Judith Forst as Anne s Mum, Christopher Bolduc as Jake, and Keith Miller as Peter. At 32, Vermont-born Muhly is the youngest composer ever commissioned by the Met, and Two Boys is his first large-scale opera. The New Yorker praised Two Boys as a "bighearted, fearless work, " noting that "Muhly handles this lurid story with thoughtfulness and compassion: plaintive chorales and brooding ostinatos suggest the sadness and the loneliness lurking within the electronic global village." Two Boys, set in an English industrial city in 2001, combines two story elements rarely seen on the operatic stage: a police procedural and a dramatization of the mysterious and lonely lives of those who inhabit the dark corners of the Internet. "What was so exciting for me about this story, and what was so poignant is that we don t live in a place where there are masked balls, really, anymore, " Muhly says of his inspiration for the opera. "So I thought the Internet where you can really pretend to be another person would actually be quite a traditional frame for an opera. I d like to think Two Boys is both new and also very, very old. " "The choral music in Two Boys references the ecstatic vocal music of Meredith Monk and Steve Reich the sense of overlapping vocal patterns creating a larger architecture of meaning, " Muhly continues. "It s almost as if you re hearing the entire aggregate of all the things that people are saying on the Internet at once." -amazon.com

Price: $29.98