ENO: Angel's Bone at Aviva Studios

Much has been made of the English National Opera’s move away from their London base in the Coliseum towards Greater Manchester, and the literature surrounding this production of Angel’s Bone makes frequent reference to collaboration and partnership. The choice of this Pulitzer Prize winning opera is a bold statement of intent for this burgeoning partnership. I’m sure it would have been easy to start off with the classics, but if you’re after a faithful production of an old favourite then tread carefully - Mozart’s Magic Flute this is NOT. 

Two angels fall to earth outside the house of Mr and Mrs XE. They are taken in, initially to receive care but are quickly degraded, exploited and molested for financial gain by the desperate couple and a parade of ghoulish abusers who turn the house in to the site of a hellish orgy. If this is opera for the 21st century, then it is a damning indictment of the Anthropocene. 

Du Yun’s score is complex. Glitching electronics pervade the piece, and there are passing nods to styles as diverse as Gregorian chanting and cabaret. The effect is as intoxicating as it is disorienting, but I feel the variety of styles is perhaps slightly oversold and mostly blends into a striking avant-garde muddle which is reminiscent of a latter-day Scott Walker album. It is far from accessible and sometimes strays dangerously close to parody - Mr XE’s (Rodney Earl Clarke) Louis Armstrong impression was a bridge too far for me - but if you surrender to it the feeling is evocative of the darkness sewn through Angel’s Bone. 

As Mrs XE, Allison Cook begins shakily but settles comfortably into the role of manipulative villain as if it were the most natural possible progression. Matthew McKninney is consistently, beautifully vulnerable as Boy Angel, whilst Mariam Wallentin’s climactic breakdown as Girl Angel is the grim highlight of the whole eighty minutes. 

Kip Williams’ direction throws everything at this piece, including a kitchen sink. The slowly rotating in-the-round stage begins bare, with the eponymous angels cowering in the centre. The walls of Mr and Mrs XE’s house are quickly pulled in over the opening minutes, obstructing the audience’s view of the live performances and making us increasingly reliant on cameras and screens for our view of what is going on. As with human trafficking in the real world, we are abstracted from the horror and yet it is hiding in plain sight. 

The video design by Ash J Woodward is particularly impressive. Where video feeds in live performance can often feel arbitrary, the framing, focus and transitions here are intentionally shot and impeccably executed. The movement of the camera operators around the stage is precise to the point of choreography. The interaction of the shots with Jack Knowles’s lighting design makes for some genuinely beautiful cinematography - no easy task when working with the unpredictability of live performance. 

You may have the impression by now that this is a lot to cram into a single-act opera, and that is undeniable. At times, the staging risks overwhelming the material and drowning out the brutality at its core. However, at the moments where the score, performances, video, lighting, and set all come together, the effect is at once dizzying and devastating.