Image credit: Tristram Kenton
Music by Du Yun
Libretto by Royce Vavrek
Directed by Kip Williams
★★★★☆
The Warehouse, AVIVA STUDIOS
English National Opera start their new relationship in Manchester with the UK première staging of Du Yun and Royce Vavrek’s 2017 Pulitzer-winning Angel’s Bone in the cavernous warehouse at AVIVA Studios. In the hands of director Kip Williams, this “punk opera” lands like a fever dream somewhere between biblical parable and late-capitalist horror show. Visually stunning and startling, this is an extraordinary and disturbing watch. Even the very setting is an endurance feat of discomfort as the audience stand throughout the performance like silent witnesses or complicit voyeurs.
The story premise alone has the savage simplicity of a mythical allegory that explores modern slavery and human immortality. Two fallen angels crash into a grimy urban world and are discovered by Mr and Mrs X.E. who epitomise the greed and desperation of a couple whose marriage and finances are imploding, and who swiftly realise these celestial creatures can be monetised. Human trafficking becomes both literal and metaphorical here. Innocence is packaged, exploited and sold with the bland efficiency of an online subscription service. The opera never allows the audience the luxury of distance. Its indictment is aimed squarely at the systems we tolerate every day, systems built on consumption disguised as modern civilisation.
Musically, the score is a thrilling assault as Du Yun’s composition ricochets between industrial noise, jagged electronica, liturgical chant and bursts of bruised lyricism. Conductor, Baldeur Brönnimann leads the BBC Philarmonic Orchestra who navigate all the tonal ambushes with astonishing precision, conjuring a soundscape that seems to vibrate through the ribcage rather than merely reach the ear. There is genuine thrill when the Girl Angel Mariam Wallentin erupts into song looking and sounding like Bjork might if her swan Oscar dress had also been hideously defiled. The glorious chorus of Kantos Chamber Choir add to the mix and also serve as the riotous guests who brutalise the angels.
The production’s visual language is equally ferocious. AVIVA Studios proves the perfect setting… cavernous, metallic and emotionally cold, like a warehouse erected on the ruins of empathy itself. The staging weaponises space brilliantly. Scenes emerge from shadow like corrupted memories, while harsh lighting strips the performers bare with interrogation-room cruelty. An inspired revolving set design by Marg Horwell does not always make for clear sightlines but vividly evokes a sleek modern home where nightmare scenarios of gothic horror can unfold.
Central performances anchor the chaos with bruised humanity. The angels themselves possess an eerie physical fragility, moving as though gravity is something newly inflicted upon them. Their suffering becomes painfully corporeal as they are repeatedly tortured and prostituted. Meanwhile the pair playing Mr and Mrs X.E. chill and with their banal and grotesque greed. Allison Cook stalks the set like a vicious predator wearing her immorality like a blood red dress. These are arresting performances by any standards but the use of 3 live camera operators on stage whose up close, forensic filming is continuously projected on to giant screens is electrifying. Every sweating pore of lust and every gory wound is inescapable.
Angels’ Bone is not trying to soothe or explain. It wants to stain the conscience. By the final moments, the audience stand silently crowding the circular stage, echoing the choral crowd surrounding the grotesque spectacle of the heavily pregnant Mrs X.E. now at the centre of a greedy media circus desperate for the next big story…life echoing art. Rarely has an opera felt so furious, so contemporary, or so unwilling to let anyone off the hook.
Live Art Alive 