Akhnaten

by Philip Glass

seen at the Coliseum on 10 March 2016

Directed by Phelim McDermott and conducted by Karen Kamensek, this production features Anthony Roth Costanzo as the Pharaoh Akhnaten, Emma Carrington as his wife Nefertiti, Rebecca Bottone as his mother Queen Tye, Zachary James as the Scribe, Clive Bayley and James Cleverton as courtiers and Colin Judson as the High Priest of Amon.

This opera from 1984 uses untranslated Egyptian and Hebrew texts and some English, mainly spoken by the Scribe. Rather than attempting a narrative of Akhnaten's reign, it depicts various ritualised scenes relating to his father's funeral and his own accession, his promulgation of Aten-worship (replacing the age-old pantheon of Egyptian gods), his founding of a new royal city, his neglect of political affairs, and his final demise.

The ritual aspect is supremely well-served by Glass's musical style, which uses carefully shaded repetitions and slight variations of great rhythmic subtlety to create a so-called 'minimalist' sound world. This is complemented visually by the striking designs of Tom Pye (set), Kevin Pollard (costumes) and Bruno Poet (lighting), in which hieratic gestures and slow movement seem to echo Egyptian stone reliefs without directly imitating them (some of the costumes are gorgeously baroque, and even in the more intimate family scenes Akhnaten and Nefertiti are dressed elaborately).

Courtiers provide a background - the ENO chorus in great form as usual - but the potentially static arrangements are broken by the Gandini juggling team who skilfully toss balls in time to the rhythms. It sounds crazy but it all adds to the mesmerising effect of the piece as a whole - unbearable if one does not like it, but otherwise just marvellous.

The three principal characters - the Pharaoh, his wife and his mother - are sung very high by a counter-tenor, a contralto and a soprano. The juxtapositions of these voices within the shimmering pulses of Glass's music create some remarkable effects, particularly when Akhnaten and Nefertiti sing together, since her voice is often lower than his. Anthony Roth Costanzo brought an almost otherworldly stillness to his role, taxing not only for its difficult text and range, but also in the physical demands of this production, which began with presenting himself entirely naked, with a bald head painted gold, to be dressed in coronation robes of massive bulk and splendour. Emma Carrington as Nefertiti, statuesque beside her husband's slighter frame, had a thrillingly rich voice, while Rebecca Bottone as the Queen Mother Tye was an imperious presence whose sharp high utterances betokened a power to be reckoned with.

A work of this kind can only be successful when the musicality and the visual designs mesh and support each other, since the spectacle must be as compelling as the singing. In this, the production is a triumph. We are witnessing a strange world where little is explained and virtually no story is developed, but the experience is nonetheless absorbing. At the end, as a rather crass tourist guide dismisses the site of Akhnaten's city as almost too ruinous to bother with, the spirits of its founder and its queens reappear and sing wordlessly. Now that the jugglers have departed, the stage is littered with the small inanimate lumps which they had used so effortlessly. Akhnaten passes a juggling ball to his mother, then to his wife; they each return it to him and he drops it. As it rolls away from him, just a squashy lump, all the high artistry is replaced by a small and silent reminder of human imperfection s the last pulses of the music die away.