A married couple, in financial and marital difficulties, discover two battered angels in their garden and bring them into their home. They clip their wings. The angels are humiliated and raped.
English National Opera announces it is in search of a different audience.
The subject matter they have chosen is human slavery and human trafficking, torture and sexual violence. The libretto is by Royce Vavrek.
The opera, dark, jarring, aggressive, is hard work and challenging for artists and audience alike. The 85-minute performance is painful, brutal and horrific. The music won Du Yun a Pulitzer Prize in 2007.
The couple are played by Allison Cook and Rodney Earl Clark. The angels are played by Matthew McKinney and Mariam Wallentin. Cook is strong. McKinney is angelic.
Du Yun says she is not an opera composer. She describes herself as an artist. The score fuses medieval polyphony, punk, electronics, chamber music and cabaret. The conductor is Baldur Bronnimann.
Kip Williams’s energetic multi-media production overwhelms the opera. Three camera operators roam the stage. What they film is immediately seen in huge close-up on two enormous screens which fill and dominate the Coliseum stage. The video designer is Ash J Woodward.
Many people are going to find Angel’s Bone too disturbing and the production too distracting.
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