English National Opera are back for their season at their old home – and I, for one, am very glad to see them. One of the most innovative and accessible of companies, they are now dividing their time between London and Manchester (it’s been quite a faff, to be honest) and, over the next few months, will bring nine productions to the Coliseum.
This includes new productions of Tosca, Iphigenie en Tauride and Adriana Mater as well as Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, celebrating its 50th birthday. There’s a guest production from the Netherlands (one night only) of To Die For (A Comedy), a revival of La Traviata, what promises to be a riotous double bill of Trial by Jury and The Zoo and two London premières, Breaking the Waves and Angel’s Bone.
Allison Cook as Mrs Xe in Angel’s Bone at the ENO
Angel’s Bone was the choice for ENO’s opening night at the Coliseum and, while it’s new to London, the company has already produced this piece in Manchester. The move, though, requires quite a transformation. Manchester Aviva Studios are a warehouse-style space, with the stage at its heart and the audience standing at its edge, five or six deep. The Coliseum is more than 100 years old with a traditional proscenium arch and seating for comfortably over 2,000. It was down to director, Kip Williams, and designer, Marg Horwell, to make the transition a smooth one.
As with the Aviva version, this production has onstage cameramen, filming the action and projecting it on to a huge screen that runs almost the entire length of the stage. This means you see every nuance of expression, every grimace, glance and gesture. This is truly mesmerising – and very unusual for opera – sometimes so much so that it is hard to take your eye off the screen and back to the comparatively tiny figures on stage. Again, as in Manchester, the singers have mics and their stage revolves so at times the walls of the house they live in block them entirely from view – so, in fact, you can only see them on screen. The effect is disturbing, confusing and chaotic.
Onstage Camera Operators, Matthew McKinney, Mariam Wallentin, Rodney Earl Clarke in ENO’s Angel’s Bone
And, given the plot of this opera, that is perhaps just as it should be. Angel’s Bone is the story of two angels who fall to earth – quite literally into a compost heap. The stressed, dysfunctional couple whose house this is, after a momentary flicker of awe, see them as a commodity whose “blessings” are for sale, though the angels are soon physically and sexually abused, too – “battered, bruised, beaten” sing the Kantos Chamber Choir chorus repeatedly. To keep them from escaping, the couple, Mr and Mrs Xe, pluck their feathers – “Prune them” screams Mrs Xe handing her husband the secateurs. It’s a gory process and the angels are left with a pitiful bare bone structure on their backs.
The abuse is ugly and graphic, there isn’t a single human being with a redeeming feature and it ends with Mrs Xe (her husband by now dead) basking in her fame in the media, pregnant with the Boy Angel’s child “a little cherub flutters in my womb”. It’s pretty harrowing stuff whether you read this as an awful morality tale about human greed or see it as a parable about modern slavery and people smuggling. Can you have a parable without redemption? There’s certainly none here – it’s quite clear that depravity will always succeed. As librettist Royce Vavrek’s plot spirals ever downwards, you’re forced to question how easily and quickly we can abandon our morals and values.
Mariam Wallentin as Girl Angel and Onstage Camera Operators in ENO’s Angel’s Bone
Vavrek began work on the project with composer, Du Yun, in 2010 when they created a single song and it grew gradually into the 85-minute piece it is now, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2017. Du Yun’s music pulls in several different genres – everything from medieval chorale to punk. The opening scene of angels in polyphonic unity was heavenly in its purity, especially in the wondrous voice of Keith Pun (was he an archangel?), whose melancholic gaze on the big screen was the only moment of observable pity.
Allison Cook gave a tour de force performance, her supple mezzo taking everything in its stride as she becomes ever more monstrous. As her besotted husband, Rodney Earl Clarke was convincing as he gave into increasing despair and the two angels, Matthew McKinney and Mariam Wallentin, were as heartbreaking as they were helpless.
Performances of Angel’s Bone are on 22nd, 23rd and 29th October at 19.30, 17th October at 18.00 and 31st October at 15.00 at the London Coliseum. For more information, and for tickets, please visit www.eno.org.
