{"id":1143,"date":"2016-03-09T13:14:19","date_gmt":"2016-03-09T13:14:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1143"},"modified":"2016-03-09T13:14:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-09T13:14:21","slug":"juggling-with-monotheism-akhnaten-makes-a-spectacle-of-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2016\/03\/juggling-with-monotheism-akhnaten-makes-a-spectacle-of-himself.html","title":{"rendered":"Juggling with monotheism – Akhnaten makes a spectacle of himself"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Anthony<\/a>

Anthony Roth Constanzo robed as Akhnaten<\/p><\/div>\n

For all the thunder that surrounds his productions, Philip Glass is undersung and underpraised. His superb memoir, Words without Music<\/em>, recounts how he entered the University of Chicago, aged 16, without having finished high school. He left, I think, in 1956, three years before I entered U of C as a first-year undergraduate.\u00a0 He left a few traces of himself behind, and much later I discovered that we had a good many U of C friends in common. My first memory of him is sometime in the 1970s at Oxford, when his ensemble performed his hypnotic, broken-chord music. They, and we the audience, were seated on the floor in one of the galleries of what was then the Museum of Modern Art Oxford (now Modern Art Oxford).<\/p>\n

Since then I\u2019ve heard performances (and finally met him) in Salzburg, and been privileged to see his 2013 English National Opera Walt Disney homage (or demolition job) The Perfect American<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What has given me the most pleasure is that I\u2019ve been lucky enough to see all three of his \u201cportrait\u201d operas, riffing on the concerns and lives of great historical figures \u2013 politics in Satyagraha<\/em>, his \u201cGandhi\u201d opera (2007, revived in 2010 and 2013); science in the 5-hour-long 1976 Einstein on the Beach<\/em> (which I saw at the Barbican in 2012); and now religion, in Akhnaten<\/em> (1983) staged by the English National Opera.<\/p>\n

And \u201csee\u201d is the operative word. Glass has a visual sensibility unusual even in opera composers \u2013 which partly explains the frequent use of visual art venues for his ensemble performances. He\u2019s hit the artistic jackpot, though, in his association with Improbable Theatre Company\u2019s artistic director, Phelim McDermott, who not only did Disney with Glass, but also the London premi\u00e8re of Satyagraha <\/em>and now a new production of Akhnaten.<\/em><\/p>\n

The historical Akhnaten was Pharaoh of Egypt c. 1351-1334 BCE, and is known to posterity because he was supposed to have made radical changes to the ancient Egyptian pantheon, instituting monotheism. To be blunt, the ideas behind this piece are not terribly striking or, for that matter, apparent. The libretto seems to be in Egyptian (Coptic, presumably) and, in one case, Hebrew, apart from some (amplified) spoken English texts. For the first time in a long while at the ENO, there were no surtitles \u2013 a hint that the words are not terribly important, at least in this production.<\/p>\n

Musically, the evening is a thrilling one. There are motifs recognisable from other of Glass\u2019s operas and, at the end of the 3-hour piece, I\u2019d take my oath that I detected teasing references to the end of Wagner\u2019s Ring<\/em>, if only in the chord-changes. The cast is fine, led from strength by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, whose tessitura coincides with that of the mezzo, Emma Carrington, playing his wife, Nefertiti \u2013 so that you have wonderful moments when her voice swoops emphatically below his. The score is both typical Glass and not so: there are, for example, no violins, so the tonalities are dark and warm, with the solo voices swirling above the orchestra. The use of percussion \u2013 the first time he called for a percussion section in an opera \u2013 provides some of the rhythmic drive we usually associate with Glass\u2019 propulsive repetitions of arpeggios.<\/p>\n

Really, though, this production doesn\u2019t feature words or music, but spectacle. I took my opera-virgin son-in-law to the second performance of Akhnaten<\/em>, and he was immediately reminded of Cirque de Soleil (but without trapezes). I can see why: Kevin Pollard\u2019s costumes are elaborate and eye-popping, and the director has instituted a scene in which the (good sport) Constanzo is ritually dressed on stage from willy-shivering nudity to robes supported by a sort of all-encompassing body-cage. Bruno Poet\u2019s magical lighting effects combine with Tom Pye\u2019s striking, often highly mobile double- and treble-tier sets, to give you a sense of space so complex that you often feel you can\u2019t take it in at a single glance.<\/p>\n

Then McDermott, and his \u201cskills ensemble choreographer\u201d Sean Gandini, move the principals and large chorus around the set, extremely slowly, but with such precision, that you can\u2019t take your eyes off them. Especially because the chorus is often moving white balls from one hand to the other, while the ten members of the \u201cskills ensemble\u201d are actually juggling<\/em>. White balls zip back and forth, fall on the floor on purpose, fly suddenly high in the air, then move seemingly horizontally. Sometimes they juggle three balls, sometimes what looks like half a dozen. The greatest praise I can give to Phelim McDermott is to say that it all looks completely natural and appropriate,<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a spectacle not to be missed. But I think my son-in-law\u2019s next opera ought perhaps to be Tosca.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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For all the thunder that surrounds his productions, Philip Glass is undersung and underpraised. His superb memoir, Words without Music, recounts how he entered the University of Chicago, aged 16, without having finished high school. He left, I think, in 1956, three years before I entered U of C as a first-year undergraduate.\u00a0 He left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-ir","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1144,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1143\/revisions\/1144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}