Two Boys (Vocal Score)

Commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Loosely inspired by a true case that happened in the North of England a few years ago, Nico Muhly’s opera enters the secret world of the teenage bedroom and explores on the realities and risks of living our lives online. A teenage boy is fatally stabbed. Another boy is caught on CCTV leaving the scene. An open-and-shut-case, it would seem. But, as the Detective Inspector Anne Strawson investigates the older boy’s story, she uncovers a bizarre nexus of chatroom meetings, false identities, fictitious spy rings and raunchy cybersex, leading to just one conclusion: it wasn’t so much murder as suicide by internet.