Theater

‘Two Boys’ brings cyberspace to the Met

Who knows what to expect from an opera about the Internet?

But when Nico Muhly’s “Two Boys” evokes the complex mysteries of cyberspace in a series of shimmering choruses, it’s easy to think this is the most gorgeous music you’ve ever heard.

Monday night’s premiere of this Met commission revealed a work that doesn’t always live up to the choruses’ astonishing level of invention. But it did confirm Muhly as a major composer of contemporary classical music.

The 32-year-old New Yorker might not care for so narrow a label. Sure, he’s an opera composer: Gotham Chamber Opera produced his “Dark Sisters” in 2011. But he’s also played keyboards for Björk and he wrote the incidental music for Broadway’s newly revived “Glass Menagerie.”

His baby face and spiked hair popped up last month on giant video screens in Lincoln Center Plaza and Times Square, when he interviewed A-listers arriving at the Met’s opening night with all the aplomb of an E! Network regular.

His “Two Boys” is an opera in the style of a police procedural like “CSI.” Teenager Brian is accused of stabbing Jake, a friend he met online, but the detective assigned to the case can’t find a motive.

As Brian recounts a series of disturbing encounters in Internet chat rooms, the stage fills with a drably dressed chorus, faces eerily lit by laptop screens. They sing tinkling fragments of melody, a seductive hymn suggesting infinite possibilities of online connections.

Less effective are Muhly’s accompaniments for the creaky plot twists of Craig Lucas’ libretto. The detective’s scenes droned on and on in an aimless medium tempo, redeemed only by Alice Coote’s flinty mezzo.

Thirty-year-old Paul Appleby turned in a star-making performance as Brian, a troubled kid half his age, his Mozartian tenor ringing out with anguished authority.

Another standout was 13-year-old boy soprano Andrew Pulver as the nerdy Jake. With only a few lines to sing, he managed to create an enigmatic, fascinating character.

Bartlett Sher’s workmanlike staging was bolstered by 59 Productions’ video projections and Hofesh Shechter’s jittery choreography.

Ultimately, though, this opera’s not about what you see. It’s about Nico Muhly’s music — strange, unsettling and often golden.