Du Yun's Pulitzer-winning opera about human trafficking, scored across plainchant, punk and pop, receives its first English National Opera staging this October.
Angel’s Bone, Du Yun’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera about human trafficking, opens at the London Coliseum in Covent Garden on Friday 16 October 2026. It is English National Opera’s first staging of the work.
Du Yun was born in Shanghai in 1977 and works in New York. She writes across classical, punk, electronic and cabaret music.
Angel’s Bone, with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, won her the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2017. Two angels fall to earth, are taken in by a suburban couple, have their wings clipped and are sold. The score moves between plainchant, punk and pop as the abuse escalates.
The run continues until Saturday 31 October 2026, inside a season of nine works the house has built around resistance and resilience. Four of the nine are by living women, and Du Yun is one of them.
Vavrek, the most produced opera librettist of his generation, has also written for Mazzoli, so two of the four contemporary works in this season share a librettist.