The Opera Philadelphia production of this opera — its first original staging in the United States — is a triumph. It was a risky endeavor that paid off with superb music, tantalizing drama, and is an exciting crowd pleaser.

This success was by no means assured, because the music is labeled as atonal, a word that scares most opera-goers. The term is misleading; it does not mean that tones are lacking. All music consists of tones, of course, and even the most "atonal" writing uses the same tones — that is, notes —  that we all know. Composer George Benjamin avoids the traditional rules about what specific tones should follow other tones, with prescribed scales and chords and signature “keys.”  

Atonal music was derided a century ago as ugly and dissonant, but Written on Skin contains beautiful melodies. And Benjamin’s score is mostly quiet and subtle. When brass instruments accompany the climax they are muted, and no singer needs to scream to be heard. 

The story is intimate, centering on a husband, wife and a young man who has a sexual affair with the wife. Thus you might consider Written on Skin to be a chamber opera, except for the fact that it requires a symphonic orchestra of 63 players. Benjamin, age 58, is a renowned English composer, pianist and a longtime teacher of composition at the Royal College of Music. A scholarly-looking man, he said in conversation after the performance that he is meticulous and demands precise coordination of text with instruments.

His score incorporates a bass viol, a medieval instrument that has six strings made of animal gut and is fretted, producing an earthier sound than a cello; and a glass harmonica, a set of rotating glass bowls that are played by the touch of dampened fingers. Also, mini tabla drums and a mandolin. These instruments fuse with the orchestra, going into the mix of sounds rather than calling attention to themselves, like an Impressionist painter adding a squeeze of color to his palette and blending it on the canvas. Its closest antecedent is Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande which similarly is a delicate, intimate story told by human voices with a huge but transparent and soft orchestra.

Benjamin and the librettist Martin Crimp started work on this composition in 2008 (as noted above, they are meticulous workers) when they had no inkling of America’s political climate in 2018 and the #MeToo movement for women’s rights. Their work’s premiere was in 2012, yet Written on Skin is remarkably prescient in its view of patriarchy and misogyny. The creators set the opera in medieval times to give the story universality, framed with present-day scenes that include references to multi-lane expressways, computers and an airport.

A large and burly man, called The Protector, is an arrogant and wealthy landowner who brags that his estate is the biggest and most beautiful. He treats his young wife as his property — “My obedient wife’s body is as much my property as my dog” — and shows little affection for her or any woman. He hires a young man, called The Boy, to create an illuminated manuscript that will memorialize the Protector’s great accomplishments. Such illuminations were medieval works of narrative art, inscribed on animal skins, thus inspiring the opera’s title.

When Boy meets the trophy wife he treats her with more respect than her husband ever did, and she responds by entering into a passionate affair. She implores Boy to include their love affair in the manuscript and, after resisting for awhile, he insists on describing their affair with words. (She, as most medieval women, was raised to be illiterate.) The two of them engage in a struggle for control, mirroring the Protector’s controlling behavior.

When Protector learns of the affair he murders Boy; but that’s not enough. For sadistic revenge, he cooks Boy’s heart and serves it to his wife for dinner.

Benjamin revealed that Written on Skin’s original title was to be Black Mirror until a British TV series by that name debuted in 2011. That is a science fiction series, loosely based on The Twilight Zone but darker.

Tom Rogers’s set and Will Kerley’s direction substitute iPads for manuscript pages, and add vivid colors to the original gray tones as the illuminations progress. Benjamin similarly uses his orchestra, he explained, “like a colored background, almost as an illuminator might.”

This cast is marvelous. Lauren Snouffer reveals a warm and glowing soprano voice as the wife, seeming to surprise herself with her new-found assertiveness and passion. The British baritone Mark Stone does the best work of his career as the husband, with soaring top notes. Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo uses his head-voice falsetto to stunning effect and is dramatically compelling as the lover. Departing from the precedent of others in this role, he introduces some climactic notes that are almost chest voice, as if a bit of Protector is coming through into the Boy.

Mezzo Krisztina Szabo and tenor Alasdair Kent nicely complete the cast as supporting characters and as angels, which are devices carried over from the thirteenth century Provençal legend Guillem de Cabestanh, La Coeur Mangë on which Crimp and Benjamin based their story. Corrado Rovaris is impressive in the subtlety of his conducting, which Benjamin says is essential. Possibly because he is Italian, Rovaris’s previous work with modern, non-Italian operas has not been adequately recognized, even though he has expertly led Philadelphia performances of such contemporary works as Ainadamar by Osvaldo Golijov, Powder Her Face by Thomas Adès, Phaedra by Hans Werner Henze, and Elizabeth Cree by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell.

His conducting here reveals the beauties of Benjamin’s unconventional harmonies as the lovers ascend to gorgeous climaxes, set against a horn solo, in major triads. In this opera, only the woman is given a name, Agnès, and I believe that was intentional; the composer and librettist have subtly created a treatise on women demanding their recognition.

Written on Skin was commissioned by the Aix-en-Provence Festival and premiered there. The opera has been produced at Covent Garden and elsewhere and its Aix staging was presented in 2015 at the Koch Theater in New York’s Lincoln Center. That production was set more specifically in a rustic medieval farmhouse. This Philadelphia staging is more eternal, and effective.