Guest Post: 'I Didn't Come From Opera, I Came From Everywhere Else': Artist Mariam Wallentin On Collaborative Storytelling In ENO's ANGEL'S BONE

Even in the middle of rehearsals for English National Opera's Angel's Bone, I don't think of myself as an opera singer; my work is much broader than that, and so is this production. I've spent twenty years making music that refuses to sit still – from my solo project Mariam The Believer, my drum-vocal duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums to Fire! Orchestra – so when English National Opera asked me to play the Girl Angel in Angel's Bone, I said yes instantly before I'd fully worked out how I'd do it.

Composer Du Yun and librettist Royce Vavrek's Pulitzer Prize-winning Angel's Bone is about two angels who fall to earth and are taken in by a couple who exploit them for money. It tackles themes that are difficult, urgent, and deeply uncomfortable – human trafficking and modern-day slavery – and it does not look away from that reality, making it a confronting experience for performers and audience members alike.

Some of the scenes of physical and sexual abuse are genuinely harrowing to perform, and finding a way into that each night without losing myself in it has been one of the biggest challenges of my career. But I do love a good challenge. And great teamwork! A supportive cast is fundamental. Allison Cook and Rodney Earl Clarke, playing the couple who destroy us, have to find the humanity in people doing monstrous things, and watching them is so inspiring. I've also found a close connection with Matthew McKinney, who plays the Boy Angel to my Girl Angel. The audience needs to believe we fell from the same place, that we're made of the same stuff – it's a primal, physical bond, and Matthew and I have had to build real trust to create that feeling on stage.

Working on this opera-theatre work with visionary theatre director Kip Williams and conductor Baldur Brönnimann has been an extraordinary masterclass in collaborative storytelling. That spirit of collaboration extends into the rehearsal room; to facilitate a cross-genre artist like me working alongside classically trained opera singers is to blend very different artistic worlds. And all blending together in Marg Howell’s unbelievable staging – not to mention everyone else giving their all to this production, from our camera operators to the hair and wig team making a work of art with our angel wings.

Performing Angel’s Bone in Manchester was very surreal, in a good way. Aviva Studios set the action in the round, with the audience surrounding us, the set rotating slowly so nobody saw the whole story from any single seat. Dizzy and disorienting, you caught fragments live, while the camera operators moved among us and video projections filled the screens. That immersive, unstable quality suited the story, and the audience felt it physically. Angel's Bone isn't meant to be comfortable viewing, deliberately so; the themes it deals with demand that we face uncomfortable truths rather than sit at a safe distance from them.

The London Coliseum is a different animal entirely; it's the traditional opera house – grand, but still feels very personal and with a great energy. Each different space shapes its own production, rather than us simply transplanting it from one venue to another. It's a different performance experience, which I find exciting rather than daunting; just as the opera and its themes are brave, so we must be too. We've had to think again about focus and distance, about how intimacy reads when nobody's six feet from your face anymore. But with the cameras so up-close, you can still see the fear in our eyes, our spit, our sweat, and our hands trembling. There’s no hiding.

I like to think that coming to opera as an ‘outsider’ gives me a fresh perspective on things; I perhaps notice things that a career-long opera singer might not. I don't carry the weight of ‘how this is usually done’, and sometimes that's useful. Opera houses like ENO opening their doors to cross-genre artists proves that the art form is evolving.

My work fuses indie music, experimental jazz, avant-garde and improvisation. I've been told, more than once, that my voice reminds them of Björk's. I don’t agree with the comparison, but I understand it :) – we're both Nordic women who believe in breaking down barriers between genres – but I'd rather people come to watch Angel's Bone and decide for themselves what it sounds like.