“Boys” meets world
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.
I think the world of Nico. Too bad he’s under the yoke of Sher stupidity.
No name opera. You know what, the Met press release did not contain
the name of the proposed opera – I read it carefully but could not find
a name. Further, it did not state that the opera had not yet been named.
So I contacted the Met and asked the question. They replied at once, no
it has not been named.
I wanted to suggest to the Met that they send their copy writers back to
journalism school – because if an expected piece of info is not in your
release, the least you can do is say so and say why. Am I missing
something here?
The Met has a huge press and PR staff, btw, but the press releases in
general strike me as less than, ummm….crisp!
It’s to be called
It’s called TOO NUMINOUS TO LIVE.
i am preparing myself to judge this work under its own terms. as for his previous works. meh.
Meanwhile in London we are truly blessed :
http://www.sadlerswells.com/show/Rufus-Wainwrights-Prima-Donna
…another run of performances like those and I’m going to start thinking Harry might have a point.
Manou, they, in London most certainly are not just blessed but truly sanctified. Wankwright’s major ego opus coming in alongside that other megalomaniac operatic pastiche ‘Love Never Dies’ from Andrew L Webber (Phantom-2)where the main character moves from Paris to Coney Island. To see a video clip of Webber’s chosen soubrette starlette for the show – sing the horrendously banal title tune with him accompanying – is a scream in itself. To think it makes the title song from the first show look ‘a absolute masterpiece by comparision ‘ is truly remarkable.
Incredibly it has been announced :at least three productions of the show on three continents in one year yet untried anywhere……though I am sure the philistines await with baited breath.
“Quick Aunt Flora, I think two composers need that the ‘runs’ medication remedy to pull people ‘up short’ , you keep in the cupboard”
Harry – whereas you make some cogent points, the sad fact is that whatever manipulations you attribute to commercial promoters, they do seem to attract the crowds (or the philistines, as you aptly put it). All the Machiavellian plots in the world would not succeed if they did not tap into something the public at large seems to respond to.
I have only just received the email from Sadler’s Wells promoting Prima Donna, and I see that it is very nearly sold out (no, no – I was just checking availability hoping to report poor sales).
I am equally quite sure that Lord Lloyd-Webber’s bank balance has been boosted quite substantially by advance bookings for Phantom Part Deux.
Facts of life, regrettably..
Rufus Wainwright has sold a lot of records (four of them to me- I own, and love, ‘Poses’, ‘Part One’ ‘Part Two’ and ‘Do I Disappoint You’) and has a large fan base, so of course Prima Donna has sold well.
Not having heard a note of it, I have no idea whether it’s any good or not. Quite a few people hereabouts appear already to have decided, and I’m prepared to bet that not all of them were in Manchester last year.
Many people heard Rufus’ piece (or were involved in it directly) when it was being workshopped and heard by the Met staff a few years ago in NY. I can say unequivocally without doubt that it is crap.
The conductor for the London production was required to sign a ONE YEAR initial contract.
That was a reply to Harry’s “Love Never Dies” post.
arrgghhh – not more B.S.!
In a better world, he’d not be let near any operas.
Who is Nico Muhly?
That BS director owed Peter Gelb big time for ll the doors he opened for Sher. Now the Brits will know the meaning of Ameritrash – but this has nothing to do with the new commission, which might work out to be an interesting piece – for a black box theater way off broadway.
I’d be surprised if any Ameritrash we come up with would make many Europeans think we have surpassed them in the -trash dept., although I suppose it’s entirely possible that Bart and his team could accomplish this.
The Met seems to be slowly becoming a black box theater.
Overheard in Family Circle in 2014
Child: “Mom, what’s the internet?”
Mom: “Well, it’s this thing they used to use back when not everyone had a smart phone”
Warning – it may not seem so “cutting edge” in a few years.
Duh, those smart-phones still access THE INTERNET!
Of course, I meant to write “smarter” phones, the new technology that will be released in another couple of years. Sorry.
Maybe by 2013-14 Sher will have figured out how to direct a chorus. I’m guessing we’ll have no relief from Yeargan’s sliding panels of doom, though.
When working with Sher, it’s very likely that anything the otherwise wonderful Yeargan comes up with is at the behest, or worse, in collusion with the former.
Yeargan’s sliding pannels of doom indeed – Love it.
This is all reading like the plot for another similar ‘Producers’ movie & musical. Pull out the worst……engage the worst….ring up the worst…
And we all laughed at the orginal funny plot as being so ridiculous and outrageous. Things though, come to pass, as they say.
Anybody privy to voice types involved in the opera? I’m interested primarily in whether or not he’s going to feature a countertenor or countertenors, based on a couple of cryptic notes around the web. Muhly has done other vocal works showcasing the countertenor.
The Met has hired mezzo Eve Gigliotti to sing Merceds in the spring Carmens; her web site says she has recently been involved in workshopping TWO BOYS.
A countertenor friend of mine, who is about 5’1″ and has played a 10 year old devil very well in the past, has been “approached” to look at a role when they get the drafts in. It is technically part of his job at the moment though, so no guarantees on how it’s cast in the end.
Fuck Nico Muhly…what a bratty, entitled piece of Ameritrash. Europe exports its garbage productions; we export our garbage people. Terrible.
What have opera-goers in London done wrong? We’ve also got Turnage’s Anne-Nicole Smith opus coming up at Covent Garden. Still, they’ll both make a change from the intert, tinkly ‘eclecticism’ of Thomas Ades or the skilled routine of Jonathan Dove.
It’s not the opera-goers but the composers doing wrong. Turnage’s problem is serious; after a runaway successs with Greek his big-opera follow up was derivative and dull so he thinks he needs a hot subject to get back the attention. What’s needed is some artistic guidance from the ROH, like an old fashioned Euro-drammaturg to get this talent into something resembling shape.
Ades is a hopless case. Beyond-miserable vocal writing. Actually, totally f**king stupid vocal writing. He listens to no one except the composers he re-writes for the accompaniments.
Here you go, sweetie. It’ll be fine.
How well do you know Muhly’s music? Can you tell us specifically what you heard
and just what your objections are? Your comments have the stink of reactionary inanity and I doubt you have anything of genuine interest to say.
I was sure schweigundtanze would have explained the objection by now. Hmmm.
Yes, how about that? Turnage, Ades and Dove have also come in for a kicking- Turnage for an opera he hasn’t even written yet.
There are some people round here who are very keen to dismiss works they’ve never heard and productions they’ve never seen. I can’t think of a better working definition of philistinism.
I tend to agree with you. However since Sher by now has a large
enough body of work in opera, I see no objection to having an open season on him. I have seen a large enough slice of his offerings to hold them – and the very idea of more of them – in contempt.
Muhly on the other hand has had only one foray into the world of
‘teatro lirico’ that I know of – a commission from the
Paris Opera Ballet – Benjamin Millepied’s wonderful ballet ‘From Here
On Out’. The ballet is being revived in April as part of the Opera’s
Jerome Robbins program.
My heart goes out to Nico – I have great expectations.
For the record, I didn’t say anything at all about his music (to which I am mostly ambivalent)…all I said was that I think he’s a bratty little kid. He’d be in the same realm of ego and narcissism as Rufus Wainwright and John Mayer if someone stuck a microphone in his face more often. Good for him on the commission; maybe when he’s done working on the music, he can work on growing up.
Fair enough. Maybe he seems like a bratty little kid because he is, in fact, a little kid. As for ego and narcissism, I don’t he’ll be the first composer in the history of opera to have an outsize opinion of himself.
Well, no, Schweig, “for the record,” that’s not “all [you] said.” If you scroll up, you may be shocked to discover that you also said, “Fuck Nico Muhly,” he’s “garbage.”
He is garbage. What did I say in my response that goes against his being garbage? Wainwright and Mayer are garbage too. What’s your point?
La Cieca (and I am sure more than a few others) would be interested in hearing on what you base this assessment. “Garbage,” it seems to me, is not a particularly useful term when describing artists.
Nico doesn’t need a microphone. Check out his blog.
A twenty-eight year old with vast, vast musical experience is not a “bratty little kid.” Scatter-shot insult does no one — and no art — any good.
On the most basic level, calling a person near the end of his third decade a kid is just silly.
You are out of control. I assumed your comments were based on … music, so I thought the question of whether or not you’ve heard his music might get us somewhere.
Have you met him in person? Under what circumstances? “I think he’s a bratty little kid …” based on what?
He’s what … 28? 29? That’s not a little kid – and not someone who they plucked out of Cambridge to compose something. I saw his piece with the Britten Sinfonia a couple of weeks ago – it was good and he seemed perfectly nice.
You sound like a really bitter, really nasty old man.