The Exterminating Angel

The Exterminating Angel plunges audiences into a surreal nightmare of social entrapment and psychological unraveling. After an elaborate dinner party, the guests discover themselves mysteriously unable to leave the drawing room, despite the absence of any physical barrier. As hours stretch into days, the veneer of civilized society dissolves into chaos, revealing the primal instincts lurking beneath polite convention. Relationships fracture, hierarchies collapse, and the guests descend into increasingly desperate and irrational behavior. The opera explores themes of class, desire, mortality, and the fragile constructs that hold civilization together. Adès's modernist score mirrors the mounting hysteria and claustrophobia, creating a disorienting soundscape that traps both characters and audience in this inexplicable purgatory. Based on Luis Buñuel's 1962 film, the work transforms the director's surrealist vision into operatic language, questioning the nature of free will and social obligation.