When I heard it, I nearly fell off my chair': behind the scenes at Angel's Bone, ENO's audacious Manchester debut

"The Warehouse in Manchester's Aviva Studios. Since opening in 2023, this arts venue run by Factory International has presented gigs by major pop acts, the largest ever show by cult Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and a sprawling four-hour odyssey through often naked rituals by performance artist Marina Abramovic. Now, for the first time, it's hosting opera. More precisely, it's about to host English National Opera's first production created in and for Manchester: the UK premiere of Angel's Bone."

"The opera won the 2017 Pulitzer prize, commended as a harrowing allegory for human trafficking in the modern world following its 2016 world premiere in the US. I nearly fell off my chair the first time I listened to it, Williams recalls backstage. I was astonished and thrilled that ENO was keen to programme it."

"It starts with this Gregorian chant and soon enters into what sounds like a track from [Radiohead album] Kid A, and then you're in a piece that sounds like you're in Cabaret, and then you're in a Bjork aria. It's this incredible, kaleidoscopic mashup of different genres. Angel's Bone marks Williams's operatic debut in the UK, after West End hits including The Picture of Dorian Gray and his current one-woman Dracula starring Cynthia Erivo."

"But he's had plenty of experience staging opera in big concrete volumes for Sydney Chamber Opera. The Warehouse, he enthuses, is an even bigger blank canvas, allowing him to approach the staging with the same sort of radical abandon that he detects in Du Yun and Vavrek's opera. Driven by money and desperation' Allison Cook rehearsing as Mrs X E."

Aviva Studios in Manchester hosts major performances in a large warehouse space, including pop concerts and large-scale works by Yayoi Kusama and Marina Abramovic. For the first time, the venue is hosting opera, presenting the UK premiere of Angel's Bone. The production is English National Opera’s first created in and for Manchester, with music by Chinese-American composer Du Yun and libretto by Canadian librettist Royce Vavrek, staged by Australian director Kip Williams. The opera won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize and was first premiered in 2016 in the US. Williams describes the score as starting with Gregorian chant and shifting through modern, cabaret-like and Björk-like sounds, creating a kaleidoscopic mix of genres. He views the warehouse as a blank canvas for radical staging aligned with the opera’s intensity.

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