English National Opera's production of Angel's Bone, a Pulitzer-winning opera by composer Du Yun with libretto by Royce Vavrek, has arrived at the London Coliseum after its UK premiere in May at Manchester's Aviva Studios. The production, directed by Kip Williams, offers a visually epic and disturbing take on human trafficking.
The opera, which runs 80 minutes, is set in the home of Mr and Mrs X E, a prosperous couple who are clearly not getting along, with a For Sale sign indicating hard times. Their bickering is interrupted by the magical appearance of two wounded angels, complete with wings. The couple soon tears feathers from their wings and enslaves them, selling them as sex toys to friends and neighbours, subjecting them to mental and physical abuse, while a third angel observes with impassive commentary.
Adapting to the Coliseum's Proscenium Stage
The Aviva is an in-the-round space, while the Coliseum has a traditional proscenium arch, so Williams and his collaborators—including Marg Horwell (set and costumes), Ash J Woodward (video design), and Jack Knowles (lighting)—have adapted the staging. The London iteration is intricate and spectacular, with room-like structures filling the space and shifting configuration throughout.
Williams' perpetual-motion staging uses three camera operators to fracture and refract the narrative, projecting images in multiple frames onto the stage's giant back wall. The projections reveal details invisible to the naked eye, magnify stage action, and even show the audience, making them uncomfortable witnesses. The to-and-fro between stage and projections is dazzling and dizzying, with singers' expressions revealed in minute detail, making their face-acting utterly convincing—a rarity in opera.
Score and Performances
The visual experience is so overwhelming that the music occasionally melts into the background, but Du Yun's score, conducted by Baldur Brönnimann, is mercurial, embracing styles from across the centuries, sensuous one moment and brutally abrasive or sarcastically smoochy the next. If a personal voice is hard to discern, that's not a problem given the production's frantic pacing.
Vocal performances are uniformly strong. Allison Cook fearlessly embodies the chain-smoking nervous energy of Mrs X E, while Rodney Earl Clarke makes her husband a reluctant co-conspirator, prepared to do anything to rekindle his wife's passion, but only money can achieve that. Matthew McKinney and Mariam Wallentin capture both dismay and defiance as the abused angels, while Keith Pun is eerily unemotive as the observing angel. The chamber choir Kantos is a hyperactive participant throughout.
A Powerful, Painful Experience
An anatomy of power and cruelty among the privileged, Angel's Bone offers a powerful, painful experience. The production runs at the London Coliseum until October 31, with tickets available via eno.org.
