Apex of Philip Glass's AKHNATEN at the Met

Floating above a vast stage, a sphere wide as an Olympic-size pool shifts color from eerie white to fiery orange to cool blue, while a lone man, robed in sheer fabric, his shaved head daubed with gold leaf, raises his eyes and sings soprano:

Thou sole God,
there is no other like thee.
Thou didst create the earth,
[everything] which walks and flies on high.
Thy rays nourish the fields.
When thou dost rise,
they live and thrive for thee. ("Hymn to the Sun," trans. Winton Thomas)

When the singer deserts the stage at the conclusion of his hymn, an off-stage chorus sings a cappela in Hebrew a portion of Psalm 104, verses that echo the imagery of God rising like the sun. The curtain falls on the second of three acts to Philip Glass's 1984 opera Akhnaten, the story of Egypt's ancient king who staked his reign on worship of one true god. His hymn and its echo from Psalms together constitute an outstanding moment of serenity and inspiration.


I've known the music since it was new, and I saw a staged concert version ten years ago (01/2009); but, until I saw director Phelim McDermott's production at the Metropolitan Opera, broadcast live in HD worldwide to movie theatres November 23, I had not appreciated this moment. Preparation in the libretto, the music, and the visual production align to make this moment the apex of the opera.


I use the term "moment" loosely. Philip Glass famously stretches moments out to explore what makes them momentous; and this one lasts nearly a quarter of an hour.


To prepare for a sunrise both literal and figurative, Glass has taken over an hour to depict oppressive darkness, a rigid society enthralled by death. In his orchestral prologue he builds layer upon layer of interlocking motifs, emphasizing darker colors and the lower strings. (Glass omitted violins to accommodate a large percussion section and small orchestra pit at the premiere production in 1984.) At the Met, McDermott arrays cast and chorus on a dark, looming set in multiple tiers that suggest both the layers of Glass's music and the Egyptian hierarchy.


The libretto, pieced together from fragmentary primary sources by Glass and collaborators, begins with ritual evisceration of the dead king Amenhotep III, whose walking spirit haunts the rest of the opera. The narrator -- "a scribe" in the libretto, but conflated with Amenhotep's ghost in the Met's production -- declaims that the dead king now "dawns as a soul." Timpani drives a militaristic funeral anthem. Men's chorus sings aggressive-sounding bursts of syllables; gradually Glass blends in the swirling of high woodwinds and women's ecstatic "ah-ah-ahs" while the king's seventeen-year-old son is first stripped down, then built up with stiff and bulky ceremonial robes and headdress. Standing on a balcony between his mother Queen Tye and wife Nefertiti, he sings with them an anthem of "acceptance and resolve." According to the libretto, his eyes are fixed on "the distant funeral cortege floating on barques across a mythical river to the Land of the Dead."


As befits an opera that consists of religious ceremonies and psalms, movement consists of slow processions, ritual gestures, and forward-facing tableaux. For contrast, director Phelim McDermott invited participation by the Gandini Jugglers, a choice more appropriate than McDermott knew when the idea came to him in a flotation tank. Sean Gandini would later show him that the world's earliest known depictions of jugglers appear on Egyptian tablets. After seeing this production, Glass himself decreed juggling to be essential to staging the opera, being a visual representation of his music's rapid circular movements in irregular patterns, what Glass once called "wheels within wheels."

The juggling is more than ornamental in the second act. Singing mournfully to Amon, lord of the Egyptian pantheon, priests lay a ring of candles around their temple to protect against the upstart king. The music shifts into high gear when Akhnaten bursts on stage like an action hero, abs etched into his armor. The jugglers grip those candles by the necks and hurl them as juggling pins that spin within inches of the beleaguered priests' heads. Akhnaten and adherents push the priests and the old animal-headed gods offstage left. After an exultant wordless war-cry of victory for Akhnaten and his allies, the tiered set parts to reveal that tremendous sun.


With this dawn of a new era, the texts dwell on the goodness of creation. Glass simplifies the texture of his music. While the narrator recites an ancient love poem twice -- once, as if expressing love of the god Aten, then as expressions of erotic love -- Akhnaten and Nefertiti approach each other from opposite sides of the stage clad in diaphonous red robes with trails dozens of feet long that intertwine during the lovers' slow motion dance and very long kiss.


After the "Hymn to the Sun" and Psalm 104, reactionary forces overwhelm Akhnaten.


In act three, the tiered walls close in again, and Glass reprises music from act one. Akhnaten appears worried while his insouciant daughters babble wordlessly; over roiling, urgent music, the narrator recites from "the Armana Letters" in which military governors begged the king to take action against encroachments on the empire. The end repeats the beginning, as the old priests and the military replace Akhnaten with the child king Tut-- in McDermott's production, a boy in sports sneakers. In an epilogue, Akhnaten, Nefertiti, and his mother Queen Tye are exhibits in a museum, of little interest to the tourists who pass by. It's funny, and sad.


Between acts, several of the performers and the conductor spoke backstage to Joyce DiDonato, Met star and host for the broadcast November 23. What came across was friendliness of the cast members to each other, and a surprising gee-whiz-I'm-in-this-amazing-thing kind of energy. J'nai Bridges, playing "Nefertiti," accepted the soubriquet "Opera's Beyonce," though I suspect Ms. Knowles wished her admirer had not added, "I've been a fan of hers since I was a little girl." Anthony Roth Costanzo, so regal and intense on stage, was warm, exuberant, even a bit silly backstage, remembering how DiDonato had held his hand years ago during his Met premier. He made a face that told us all we needed to know about the hot wax treatment prescribed by director McDermott to remove all hair from his head and body, to make "Akhnaten" someone other-worldly. Glass had the same intention when he wrote the role for a countertenor. Someone interviewed that day admitted that it's still a shock to hear the piercing high voice come from a grown man.


My one gripe about the show is that the props and many costumes looked like they'd been purchased at a garage sale. Perhaps the designers wanted some kind of timeless quality, so they grabbed objects and pieces of clothing from disparate decades of the 19th and 20th centuries. The egregious lapse of judgement was to make Akhnaten's daughters into half-wrapped mummies with punk haircuts and black lipstick. The effect they wanted was there in the Hymn to the sun.


Before the opera began, patrons at my neighborhood movie theatre north of Atlanta made the usual comments about Glass's music being "boring." They continued open conversation during the instrumental prologue and much of Act I. Did they quiet down finally because some of us shushed them? I like to think that the music and commitment of the artists drew them into Akhnaten's peculiarly beautiful world.

Photo collage: Akhnaten assaults the old temple -- with jugglers. Inset, left: Servants pour young Akhnaten into a king's clothing. Inset, right: Anthony Roth Costanza's profile.