As it plants its roots in Manchester, English National Opera’s commitment to London’s Coliseum Theatre remains firm, while partnerships with Manchester organisations are already bearing fruit.

Co-producing the UK premiere of Du Yun and Royce Vavrek’s opera Angel’s Bone with Factory International, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the city’s Kantos Chamber Choir is as much a slapped gauntlet as a polite calling card. Tame, canonical programming this is not. It is one of the first productions at Aviva Studios to confidently demonstrate what this vast, magic warehouse can really offer, and it is refreshing to see new work like this, in an ‘empty box’ venue, unencumbered by the weight of tradition that opera is sometimes (rightly and wrongly) thought to hide behind.

The running time is 80 minutes, but these are 80 intense, uncomfortable minutes, not least because the Aviva audience stands throughout – the discomfort is deliberate – while the action is performed in the round. We witness Mr and Mrs XE, a couple in dire financial straits whose marriage is collapsing. Mrs XE wants more and wonders if she was ‘meant to be legendary’. Lady Macbeth-like, she is performed with brilliantly lustful malice by Allison Cooke. Her husband finds two young fallen angels in their yard and she quickly recognises them as a blessing to be monetised, pimped and exploited. “Prune them!” she declares, and what follows is a remorseless presentation of how the most vulnerable are violated. Du Yun has said that the piece’s original focus was to allegorise and confront the realities of people trafficking, yet here the exploitation seems less explicit and more chillingly generalised. The angels are maimed and degraded, first by the XE couple and then by their social circle, in a coke-fuelled, nightmarish party sequence. Thematically, there is no let up.

Rodney Earle Clarke as Mr XE is a baritone with range and intensity, at one point departing from his fine operatic register to sing a jazz sequence with a rasp of Louis Armstrong. As the Boy Angel, tenor Matthew McKinney is a delicate victim whose poignant high notes remind us of the character’s ethereality. The vocalist Mariam Wallentin excels as the Girl Angel, her key bravura moment channelling a Bjork-like fury. The Kantos Choir provides a chorus of angels in a brief prelude where Du Yun’s music evokes medieval polyphony, a predictable reference point, but undeniably beautiful. As the musical styles shift from atonality, jazz, blues and punk, the choir also plays the vicious party guests and, towards the end, a crowd of selfie-craving, autograph-grabbing fans idolising Mrs XE, who by now has marketed herself as a reality television star. Throughout, Baldur Brönniman, who trained at the Royal Northern College of Music, leads a ten-piece orchestra from the BBC Philharmonic which can more than cope with Du Yun’s wide-ranging soundscape.

Director Kip Williams brings things to life sharply. On an empty revolving space, stage hands construct a house around Mr and Mrs XE, trapping them and their mutilated prisoners. Marg Horwell’s set and costume designs have a clarity that places the fantastical elements in a recognisably suburban setting. The walls occasionally block our view and, though we can pruriently peer through windows, the bathroom housing the angels is eventually obscured in the building’s dark heart. Houses are like that, they hide things.

Throughout the performance, the action is filmed and transmitted to huge screens high above the stage. This compensates for blocked sight lines and allows for performances of often remarkable intimacy, particularly affecting when McKinney, as the gentle Boy Angel, sings. Those screens also remind us that our world is saturated with mediated imagery which, like Mr and Mrs XE, commodifies and exploits, distracting us from the injustices that surround us.

A powerful event, Angel’s Bone is what Aviva Studios is for. This bodes well for Manchester’s evolving relationship with ENO.

By Andrew Moor, Opera Correspondent

Main image: Angel’s Bone production photo taken on May 11, 2026 at Aviva Studios, Manchester for ENO. Image courtesy ENO.

 

Angel’s Bone transfers to The Coliseum Theatre, London, October  16-31, 2026