David Lang / Mark Dion: Anatomy Theater

Based on actual 18th-century texts, David Lang's anatomy theater follows the astonishing progression of an English murderess from confession to execution and, ultimately, public dissection before a paying audience of fascinated onlookers. Through the miracle of opera, she sings through it all. Composed by David Lang, with libretto co-written by Lang and scenic designer Mark Dion, anatomy theater is a tuneful and grisly theatrical event that conjures a time when "specialists" traveled from town to town in pre-modern Europe, conducting public dissections of the corpses of executed criminals, seeking evidence of moral corruption in the interior of the human body.