Composer Du Yun wins Pulitzer for human- trafficking opera

Chinese- born composer Du Yun won the Pulitzer Prize for music on Monday for Angel’s Bone, an experimental opera that explores the psychology behind human trafficking.

The one- act opera, which premiered in 2016 at New York’s Prototype festival, takes place in a non- descript US suburb but is filled to the brim with spiritual symbolism.

“Mr. and Mrs. X. E.,” riven by marital strife and financial problems, enslave and victimize a pair of angels who stumble upon the property.

The music reinforces the unsettling plot with a loud electronic beat set to a chamber orchestra and choir. At the premiere, one of the angels was played by Jennifer Charles, the singer of New York dream rock band Elysian Fields.

Du Yun, who was born in China and came to the US legally, said that she wrote the opera in part out of frustration about the lack of understanding of immigration.

“People talk about the immigrants and have this idea that this is bad, we don’t want them in,” she told AFP ahead of the premiere, months before Donald Trump’s election on an anti- immigration platform.

She hoped her opera would show another side – that even native- born people can behave in ways they did not expect.

“If we are given the opportunity to make profit, then maybe we are not so different from each other,” she said.

“I think the dark psychology of human beings is very interesting as an artist.”