Angel’s Bone
Opera by Du Yun. Libretto by Royce Vavrek.
“In the wrong hands, feathers become thorns.”
It begins like a modern fairy tale: After two angels land bruised in a couple’s garden, they are taken in by the couple. But instead of nursing them back to health, the couple clip their wings and use their heavenly powers to enrich themselves under the guise of charity. When the husband realizes the wrong path his wife has taken, he looks for a way out.
In her second opera ANGEL’S BONE, the young Chinese composer Du Yun addresses an uncomfortable but all the more relevant topic with unsparing poetry: the dark abysses of modern slavery and human trafficking. Her musical language combines classical music, punk rock, cabaret and electronics, among other things, and thus penetrates deep into psychological abysses. Du Yun received the Pulitzer Prize in Music for ANGEL’S BONE in 2017.
PRESS
“Stage director Jorinde Keesmaat pulls out all the stops to show captivating music theater that gets under your skin”
“And if word of the success of the premiere gets around, it could even happen that younger people are attracted by the total work of art opera.”
‘Director Jorinde Keesmaat describes brutally to the limits of what is possible on stage how the slave-owning couple and their customers abuse the angels. Keesmat documents rape and despair in outrage and solidarity with the victims with arousing directness. The fact that such a fate not only affects the two grand piano creatures intended by the score, but is a mass phenomenon, becomes understandable when Keesma places the extras of the house as siblings at their side’
‘Das Publikum applaudiert lange und verlässt die Aufführung erkennbar betroffen. Ein ungewöhnlicher Opernabend, den man so schnell nicht vergisst.’
CREDITS
JOHANNES WITT
Musical direction
JORINDE KEESMAAT
Staging
SAMMY VAN DEN HEUVEL
Stage and costumes
PASCAL MERIGHI
choreography
FROUKE TEN VELDEN
video
ULRICH ZIPPELIUS
Chorus rehearsal
LALINA GODDARD
dramaturgy
EDITH GROSSMAN
Mrs. X.E.
ZACH WILSON
Mr. X.E.
ANNA ANGELINI, A. G.
Girl Angel
JASON LEE
Boy Angel
GERBEN VAN DER WERF, A. G.
Archangel
