UPDATE:  A press release has just gone out announcing “The Metropolitan Opera and the English National Opera (ENO) will co-produce a world premiere production of composer Nico Muhly’s first opera.

With a libretto by Craig Lucas, [Uhhhhh – LC] the opera is a fictionalized story based on a true incident in which a teenager attempts to arrange his own murder via the internet. The new production, directed by Bartlett Sher [Double uhhhhh, is it 1988 again and nobody told me? – LC], will debut at the ENO’s London Coliseum in June 2011 and be presented at the Met during its 2013-14 season. The creative team includes Sher’s longtime collaborators set designer Michael Yeargan and costume designer Catherine Zuber; lighting designer Donald Holder; and the acclaimed London-based video designers Fifty Nine Productions.

The release also confirms the previously whispered rumor that Lucas has engaged as his publicist the late illusionist Doug Henning:

Librettist Craig Lucas said, “To be able to share the stage with anything as numinous and magical as Nico’s music is a true gift of the journey.”

EARLIER: La Cieca hears that any moment now the Metropolitan Opera will announce that the opera they commissioned from Nico Muhly, Two Boys, is on the schedule for the 2013-2014 season.