Anatomy Theater

Based on actual 18th-century texts, 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.

Anatomy Theater 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. Written by Pulitzer Prize–winning and Oscar-nominated composer David Lang and world-renowned visual artist Mark Dion, Anatomy Theater is a joyous, tuneful and grisly theatrical event.