The score’s obsessive, revolving arpeggios, often in the key of A minor, are put to an expressive use that some doubters might find surprising, with passages of tragic monumentality and brooding timelessness. Glass’ opera follows this storyline, but not as a narrative rather, the piece is a series of set scenes, like paintings or photographs with motion.
Eventually, Akhnaten and his family become insular and unresponsive to the needs of the people, so the conservatives strike back, overthrow Akhnaten, destroy his idyllic city, restore the old-time religion, and obliterate nearly all traces of his existence. In the opera, Akhnaten comes to power in the wake of a centuries-long string of conservative pharaohs in a conservative society and tries to upend the old polytheistic order by introducing the idea of one God, Aten, as symbolized by the sun. Akhnaten (countenor Anthony Roth Costanzo) tries to introduce the idea of one god. Moreover, LA Opera did cast an African-American woman, mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, in a lead role as Akhnaten’s wife Nefertiti. I think the protestors were barking up the wrong tree on this one, given the extreme scarcity of countertenors in the world trained to sing Akhnaten. LA Opera countered immediately, handing out a printed statement explaining their color-blind casting policies. – was a black African and further accusing this production of being true to the entertainment industry’s “racist past” by not casting a black person in the role. A group under the label Black History Matters picketed the entrance of the Pavilion before the performance, proclaiming that the historical Akhnaten – an Egyptian pharaoh who reigned for 17 years after 1375 B.C. 1340 BC (Neues Museum Berlin)įittingly, only three days before Election Day in a polarized nation, this Akhnaten could not get started without a whiff of protest. But it was a grand, significant step forward for a company that is displaying a fall calendar full of daring, enterprising projects. Nor was it a completely in-house operation, this being a co-production with English National Opera, which provided the sets, props, and most of the lavish costumes. Long Beach Opera beat them to it in 2011, and the tiny Oakland Opera Theater laid claim to the West Coast premiere in 2004.
LA Opera’s Akhnaten was not a first for this region. 5, a new production of Akhnaten checked in at the Pavilion for a three-week run. First, a touring company of Einstein On The Beach lit up the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in 2013, then came the score for the film Dracula last year at the Theatre at Ace Hotel. LOS ANGELES – It took a long, long time for Philip Glass to establish a toehold at Los Angeles Opera, but he’s here now with a vengeance. Phelim McDermott’s production of ‘Akhnaten,’ at the LA Opera, is the third Glass opera in the city’s recent history.
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