Fusing together opera, drama, live video capture and a team of set movers on stage, Angel’s Bone is not your usual ENO fare. Over 85 minutes, the intensity never flags and the immediacy of the video work has a genuine purpose.
Composer Du Yun and librettist Royce Vavrek crafted their opera from two ideas: sex trafficking and angels. From that, and over 16 years of development, the story of Mr and Mrs X.E. and the two angels they force into slavery has become a visceral and challenging comment on greed and fame.
Allison Cook and Rodney Earl Clarke are the couple in crisis: both financial and personal. Matthew McKinney and Mariam Wallentin are the angels who land in their garden, bruised and afraid. Watching all proceedings is another angel, a male soprano (Keith Pun).
Instead of recognising their good fortune in an angel visitation, the X.E.’s instead see a money-making opportunity, brutally stripping the angels of their feathers and ability to fly. They are then pimped out to friends at a decadent party where religious fervour and sexual desire collide.
The sets, placed on a revolve, are in constant movement to allow us to see glimpses into the rooms on stage. The video work, with three camera operators, takes us close into other areas while capturing alternative angles during songs – this is not pure opera – and scenes.
The physicality of Angel’s Bone places significant challenges on its singers, especially the angels who need to crawl, cower, or reach difficult high-range notes quickly. For Wallentin, one song is pure rage at being violated and abused. McKinney is heartbreaking in voice and acting as he struggles with human interest.
This is not an easy work to experience. It demands concentration and engagement with its themes – gritty, dynamic, and devastating. It doesn’t just allow the angels to carry the story. Mrs X.E. is just as much a key character carrying significant complexity.
Baldur Brönnimann is tonight’s conductor, and the ENO Orchestra are as remarkable as ever. Angel’s Bone is not a melodic opera; as befits the topic, it is often discordant and disorienting.
Director Kip Williams has envisaged a deeply unsettling world for this story, with Marg Horwell’s set and costume design being particularly convincing, from the interconnected rooms to the ruined angel wings.
The guest chamber choir for Angel’s Bone are Kantos. Based in the North of England, the 16 on-stage singers in this add colour, contrast and creativity through their inclusion as angels, customers, and chorus.
As the X.E.’s, Cook and Clarke communicate a lifetime of hurt pride and corrosive passion, while providing powerful vocals and characterisations. Pun’s delicacy in voice and demeanour gives the observing angel a role offering balance to the plight of the injured angels and those who seek to exploit them.
Angel’s Bone tackles the question of what we choose to see through its staging choices, and leaves us with the uncomfortable truth that you can look, but not always understand.
I’m giving this 4.5 stars. The work of everyone on stage and off is exemplary. I just missed that last bit of human connection and contrition that might have redeemed the cruelty.
Angel’s Bone is at English National Opera, London Coliseum until 31 Oct.
Photo credit: Tristram Kenton