Man and Boy: Dada is a 2003 opera by Michael Nyman on a libretto by Michael Hastings. It tells the story of a friendship between aging dada artist Kurt Schwitters and a twelve-year-old boy. These two characters and the boy's mother make up the cast of the opera.

It was first performed at the Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe, Germany, 13 March 2004, directed by Robert Tannenbaum. It was then produced by the Almeida Opera on 15, 17 and 18 July 2004, in a production designed by Jeremy Herbert and directed by Lindsay Posner at Almeida Theatre.

The opera features an extensive use of oboe (rare in Nyman's work), mostly in the second act, to capture the feel of post-War popular music, somewhat reminiscent of Dmitri Shostakovich's Suite for Variety Orchestra.

Michael is a young boy on a bus who competes with an old man for bus tickets, which they both collect (as did Nyman as a child). The man turns out to be Kurt Schwitters, a dada artist who escaped Germany, although his wife has been killed and his son missing, and is facing deportation. They get to talking about their collections. Schwitters invites Michael to come to his apartment to see them. Michael refuses for obvious reasons, but asks what he does with them, and is told about merz collages.

Michael lives with his mother. His father was a night watchman whose body was never found when his building was struck by a German doodlebug bomb. Although Michael's mother hates all Germans, she makes an exception for the artist, who gradually earns her trust. Michael and Kurt go to the British Museum together and deface a lion statue in a dada manner.

...
Wikipedia