Chinese-born Du Yun wins Pulitzer for opera on human trafficking

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 last year at New York’s Prototype festival, takes place in a non-descript American suburb but is filled with spiritual symbolism.

“Mr. and Mrs. X.E.,” riven by marital strife and financial problems, enslave and victimise 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 United States legally, said that she wrote the opera in part out of frustration on 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, ‘why don’t they just get legal,’ or build a wall,” she said in an interview ahead of the premiere, months before Donald Trump’s election on an anti-immigration platform.