I just saw Akhnaten at the Metropolitan Opera in New York yesterday. From an opera fan’s standpoint, it was what an opera is supposed to be, but I can’t say whether it was spectacular or not because I haven’t figured out what it truly was.
Don’t misunderstand me: everybody involved with the performance of the production was top-notch. I was particularly impressed by Anthony Roth Costanzo, the countertenor singing the title role of the monotheistic Egyptian ruler. The best part for me was his singular labelable (if such a term may be coined) aria, the “Hymn to the Sun,” in which he praises the sun god Aten. It’s the one sung piece in which the audience could truly identify his character.
Oh, and since our performance of this production was being transmitted live to theatres worldwide, the initial appearance of the new ruler of Egypt, originally scheduled to be totally nude, was done with a carefully placed cloth over the three potentially offensive body parts. I did worry that one bad shimmy or sneeze would set social media buzzing, but it didn’t happen. Every moment Mr. Costanzo was onstage, he held our interest, and was awesome all by himself.
The other roles seem to be a collective secondary grouping, including wife Queen Nefertiti (J’Nai Bridges) and mother Queen Tye (Dísella Lárusdóttir), along with the rebellious priests and populace, whose wardrobes seemed a mix of New Orleans pomp for the religious advisors and repressed laborer rags for the others.
Oh, and there were jugglers. A troupe is part of the entire production, tossing balls with great skill, and it certainly was entertaining. The balls probably symbolize change, responsibility or the flux of power or something, but that would take more research to be sure. Any performer who dropped a ball (and it’s inevitable to happen more than once) embraced their role in the proceedings by paying homage on their knees to the sun god for the error: this is why, in a scene, one performer in a circle of jugglers was down while the others carried on as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I read about that in the program during intermission and passed the word on to my seat partners, getting to an “ah” moment. We finally got it, or something from it.
The Playbill® was full of information, and was much needed, since the popular titles the Met provides at each seat only labeled the scenes and gave a brief description, except for an English read-along for the above-mentioned aria. The production changes the language to suit the place of performance, but is sung otherwise in the Egyptian tongue, as well as a few others, when the characters were not harmonizing in long passages.
That’s the issue with a Philip Glass opera: it’s unique in that the passages are repetitious, the music only varied in discreet ways which only the knowledgeable or attentive would parse, and the performance was interpreted with minimal interactive dialogue.
And everything about the opera was slow, as if somebody set a 33 rpm record to 25. The characters moved at a snail’s pace onstage. Expressions were stretched out to last a minute, as if telling us that something prolonged was happening. In the end, Akhnaten died, but I’m not sure how, since he wasn’t assaulted physically, and searching for more information about him (the real ruler, I mean) leaves more questions than answers. Genetic proof points to King Tutankhamen being the son of Akhenaten, and of course he ultimately took over the throne, put everything back to the way it was with multi-god worshipping, and everybody tried to forget the 17 years of Akhenaten’s reign ever happened.
I won’t forget I saw this production, but if I go to another Philip Glass production, I’ll look for a “dummies” book to read up beforehand.
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