There’s a long-standing genre of literature and drama (Voltaire, Dickens, Brecht are three names out of many) whose purpose is to make you angry about the injustices of the world. Focused on the evils of modern domestic slavery, Du Yun and Royce Vavrek’s Angel’s Bone is a polemic that fits squarely into this genre.
The premise is simple enough: Mr and Mrs X.E. are an unhappy couple, struggling with money, dissatisfied with their marriage. Mrs X.E. is convinced that she deserves more from life than she is being provided with. Into this environment, a pair of angels fall from heaven. Mrs X.E. immediately sees a cash cow: they prevent escape by hacking the feathers from the angels’ wings and proceed to mercilessly pimp the angels out. Initially it’s “pay us and they will bless you”, but it degrades rapidly into sex and violence of the most appalling kind.
I’m used to the music of contemporary operas being eclectic, but I wasn't expecting Du Yun to start by giving us something very akin to Renaissance polyphonic sacred music, superbly sung by the Kantos Chamber Choir. From there, the music veers from one genre to another – pounding electronics at its heaviest, lounge music at its most sarcastic, contemporary vocal dissonance at moments of extreme emotion. And there are plenty of those: Du Yun, Vavrek, director Kip Williams and English National Opera’s production team pull no punches as they depict the horrific cruelty to which the angels are subjected. Conductor Baldur Brönniman and the ENO Orchestra prove remarkably versatile in extracting the most out of every style.
At its most brutal, the song Brick J likes it rough (the original musical thought which sparked the opera) is a pounding, mind-numbing display of sadism, sung harrowingly by Girl Angel Mariam Wallentin. But the opera isn’t purely focused on the horror: there’s considerable exploration of how Mrs X.E. comes to be as evil as she is. The economic crisis facing the ‘squeezed middle’ isn’t helping; her obsession with reality TV is feeding her sense of injustice; sexual fantasies and unfulfilled needs play their part – the doting, subservient Mr X.E. clearly doesn’t cut the mustard. That lays the groundwork following which two addictive thrills – free money on tap and being the centre of attention – turn her into a true monster.
Allison Cook turned in an extraordinary vocal and acting performance. The staging is built around three camera operators who are filming the live action, which we see blown up to the full width of the stage, which means that we are seeing Cook (and the other characters) in immense close-up: every blemish, every fine detail of expression is writ large. In every way, Cook was vivid in showing the multiple emotions of Mrs X.E. – triumph, desperation, delirium, desire – and her multiple personalities, both authentic and, for the TV cameras at the end, utterly disconnected from reality.
As Mr X.E., Rodney Earl Clarke displayed exceptional versatility, from standard operatic bass-baritone to cavernous Louis Armstrong schmaltz. As the Boy Angel, Matthew McKinney was suitably angelic in voice and tortured in demeanour.
There is a third angel whose presence is an enigma: listed only as “Male soprano”, Keith Pun sang angelically, stared at the camera intently, but he is only a watcher. Why is he there? How, indeed, did the Boy and Girl Angels come to fall from heaven in the first place? We are never told.
Throughout its 80 minutes, the opera ratchets up the evil and degradation. It springs one surprise after another, of which one that sticks in my mind is when Mrs X.E. picks up an axe: is she going to kill the angels? Or finally hack their wings off? No, this is the moment of triumph when she cuts to shreds the “For Sale” sign outside her home. Such is the limit of the horizon she can imagine.
Whatever else you can say about Angel’s Bone, it’s not exactly light entertainment, and I came out of the Coliseum feeling somewhat battered. But perhaps that’s besides the point: what Du Yun and Vavrek are doing is to tell a story that needs to be told – and by means of allegory, countless stories like it – while making use every tool that modern opera and staging can provide, not least that disturbing high resolution live video. And with outstandingly committed performances from everyone on stage and off, I can only admire Du Yun, Vavrek and ENO for their courage in putting on this show.
