met opera philip glass akhnaten
Philip Glass has a solid trajectory at the Metropolitan Opera. One of the biggest hits of the 2019–20 season, Philip Glass's Akhnaten is the third installment in the composer's Portrait Trilogy focused on revolutionary figures from world history. Philip Glass returns to the Met with a new staging of Glass’s Akhnaten, conducted by Karen Kamensek in her Met debut. Enjoy a free 7-day trial! Akhnaten | 11 Feb – 7 March 2019 | London Coliseum |Tickets from £12, with 500 tickets available at every performance for £20 or less. He started from the premise of wanting to complete a trilogy of “portrait” operas about historical figures whose vision and ideas—in contrast to the violent power of warfare—had effected radical social change and transformed our understanding of the world. In his original concept, Glass contemplated a simultaneous presentation of the stories of Akhnaten and Oedipus (staged upstage and downstage, respectively) and intended to collaborate with Velikovsky as his librettist. The deliberate suppression of all memory of Akhnaten suggests how radical his challenges to the incredibly conservative social order of ancient Egypt must have been. By David Salazar. A striking example that carries symbolic weight for the opera’s dramatic ideas is the juxtaposition of aggressive, militaristic drumming during the funeral ceremonies for Amenhotep III—the sound of the “old order” that his son dares to subvert—with the sonorities associated with Akhnaten, such as the solo trumpet or, in his beautiful duet with Nefertiti, a pair of solo celli. If you are using Internet Explorer or other browsers you may encounter problems with certain sections of our website. A voracious reader, Glass chanced upon a book in which the bestselling “catastrophist” writer Immanuel Velikovsky (1895– 1979) argued that the Greek mythical figure of Oedipus was modeled on actual events from Akhnaten’s life. Librettist. Watch a preview of Philip Glass' Akhnaten, which will be broadcast live from the Metropolitan Opera to Irish venues nationwide on 23-November 2019. Please login to continue. Richard Hubert Smith/English National Opera/Metropolitan Opera On November 8, … The first two installments of the trilogy, Einstein on the Beach (1976) and Satyagraha (1980), had focused on well-known figures who left their respective marks principally in the areas of science (Albert Einstein’s revolutionary theory of relativity) and politics (Mahatma Gandhi and his advocacy of non-violent resistance in the face of social injustice). The 14th-century-B.C.E. Still, Akhnaten’s sound world, while unquestionably in it’s composer’s unique voice, is overall closer than its two predecessors to more conventional operatic scoring. Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo is the title pharaoh, alongside J'Nai Bridges, Mezzo-Soprano, who makes her Met debut as his wife, Nefertiti. (© Karen Almond / Met Opera) A ruler must keep a … A sold-out sensation during the 2019–2020 season, Phelim McDermott ’s breathtaking staging of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten is now available on Met Opera on Demand, our subscription streaming service. In the Met's premiere production of the hypnotic Philip Glass opera that keeps every ball in the air. : ','}}, Find The Metropolitan Opera on Facebook (opens new window), Find The Metropolitan Opera on Twitter (opens new window), Find The Metropolitan Opera on Instagram (opens new window). The composer’s instincts as a musical dramatist are particularly effective in Akhnaten’s vocal casting. Online event, Anywhere in the world, WA. Met Opera: Philip Glass’s Akhnaten (on-demand until 3/19/2021) No ticket needed. Akhetaten, the new capital city that he founded—which Glass dramatizes in the second act, at the center of the opera—was abandoned and crumbled into ruins. Only with its rediscovery during the archeological expeditions of the 19th century did evidence of the historical Akhnaten emerge, breaking the spell of what Glass calls “a forced amnesia.”. (Einstein was written for non-operatically trained voices and Glass’s own amplified ensemble, while Satyagraha’s orchestra was limited to woodwinds and strings). These texts are sung in the original ancient languages (Egyptian or Akkadian, the diplomatic language that had developed in Mesopotamia). 2019–20 season. Once again at the helm is conductor Karen Kamensek, a noted master of Glass’s music. At the end of Akhnaten, Glass quotes a thematic cell from the very beginning of the Portrait Trilogy—the opening scene of Einstein on the Beach—but there is no sense of a “return” to where we began. On January 6, 1907, the entrance to a rock-cut tomb was uncovered in the Valley of the Kings outside modern-day Luxor, Egypt. English is also spoken in this performance by a narrator figure, whose commentary provides translations of the primary-source texts. We hear that the daring moments of full-frontal male nudity in the forthcoming Philip Glass opera will not be allowed to leave the house intact when Akhnaten gets a … Rigorous DNA testing conducted in 2010 was reported to have confirmed that identification, though the matter remains hotly contested—like just about everything else associated with this most controversial of ancient Egypt’s vast lineage of rulers. The chief sources include poem fragments, inscriptions, diplomatic letters inscribed on cuneiform tablets, and legal decrees. While he was preparing the groundwork for Akhnaten in the early 1980s, Glass decided to turn the uncertainties and tantalizing gaps in our knowledge about the pharaoh to his theatrical advantage. Philip Glass's groundbreaking opera Akhnaten has its Met premiere during the 2019–20 season in a stunning production by Phelim McDermott. While the renaissance of interest in the countertenor voice has made it much more familiar than it was when Glass initially wrote this music in the early 1980s, Akhnaten’s singing retains a startling effect—at least initially—since he is a silent visual presence onstage until well into the first act. Pharaoh Akhnaten introduces monotheism before his people - and the priests - are ready. Thursday, March 18, 2021 (PDT) @ 4:30 pm - 6:30 pm The Metropolitan Opera. {{::date | momentFormat:'D'}}{{$last ? '' The mummy safeguarded within may have been the preserved body of the pharaoh Akhnaten (today more commonly known as Akhenaten). The psalm’s uncanny echoes of the Egyptian hymn, for Glass, are meant “to underline the connection of Akhnaten’s ideas with those of our own time and culture.” The composer’s reference is to the controversial theory that Sigmund Freud famously advanced in his 1938 essay collection Moses and Monotheism, that Akhnaten’s suppressed religious revolution survived and re-emerged—channeled by Moses—as ancient Jewish monotheism. This production was originally created by English National Opera and LA Opera, Select a date from the dropdown to filter cast by date of performance. Philip Glass’s mesmerizing modern masterpiece—a smash-hit in its 2019 company-premiere run—returns in Phelim McDermott’s unforgettable production, which brings ancient Egypt to vivid life with striking stage tableaux and a troupe of jugglers. Philip Glass. The Met: Live in HD series is made possible by a generous grant from its founding sponsor The Neubauer Family Foundation. Glass writes Nefertiti as a contralto to be closer in range to her spouse and makes his mother, Queen Tye, a soprano. Amidst a grand public relations blitz, the a new production of Philip Glass’ 1984 Akhnaten has finally arrived at the Met, having been seen in London and Los Angeles.Reports from afar were glowing, and, indeed, it is a magnificent musical and dramatic spectacle.Director Phelim McDermott, conductor Karen Kamensek, the glorious, finely trained and tuned orchestra, Donald Palumbo's chorus … Our website has been optimized for viewing in the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Learn More. Within a few years of assuming power, the pharaoh changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhnaten to signal allegiance to Aten, an abstract deity associated with the sun god (Ra). But the writer died before they could meet, and Glass soon abandoned his twin-plot concept. Find The Metropolitan Opera on Facebook (opens new window), Find The Metropolitan Opera on Twitter (opens new window), Find The Metropolitan Opera on Instagram (opens new window). He decided to downsize by doing without the entire violin section. From Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, at the Metropolitan Opera. Akhnaten, the last opera in Philip Glass’s trilogy of science, politics, and religion, finally made it to the Metropolitan Opera Friday night. Glass requests this aria to be sung in the vernacular language of the audience. Sung In. Anthony Roth Costanzo (center) stars in Philip Glass's Akhnaten, directed by Phelim McDermott, at the Metropolitan Opera. If you are using Internet Explorer or other browsers you may encounter problems with certain sections of our website. A significant exception is the Hymn to the Sun (attributed to the pharaoh himself), which Akhnaten sings in the pivotal final scene of Act II. It will be broadcast live in HD to movie theaters around the world on Nov. 23. It is 2.75” in diameter and imprinted in gold with “Philip Glass, Akhnaten, The Metropolitan Opera.” It is the perfect memento for this glorious production. He traveled to Egypt to gather impressions from relevant archeological sites and visited the Cairo Museum, where the elusive fragments gathered in a room devoted to Akhnaten inspired an epiphany about how to proceed with the work-in-progress. The upcoming weekly lineup in the Metropolitan Opera's Nightly Met Streams series includes filmed presentations of two Philip Glass operas, … Akhnaten. NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T he final opera in Philip Glass’s “portrait” trilogy, Akhnaten, which premiered in 1984, had its Metropolitan debut this season. We think of the ancient world as Greece, but the ancient world was really Egypt.” Rereading Freud’s book “convinced me that Akhnaten was the person I was looking for.”. This production runs: May 19 - Jun 10. In Michael Blackwood’s 1985 documentary on the making of Akhnaten (A Composer’s Notes: Philip Glass and the Making of an Opera, which is available on YouTube), the composer reiterated the relevance of this ancient tragedy for our situation: “There’s nothing in the story that isn’t contemporary, really; it’s about power, and upholding old ideas, and trying to force new ideas into the world, and what happens to the people that do that.”. In the aftermath of the overthrow depicted in the opera’s final scenes, the pharaoh was violently effaced from official history, his revolutionary ideas rejected and revoked. Akhnaten: Trailer. As Glass recalled it: “It seemed to me, at that moment, that we needed no more story than was already there, that the missing pieces, far from needing to be filled in or explained, actually added to the mystery and beauty of our subject.” With the “mere bits and pieces” relating to the ruler that Glass and his team of collaborators had at their disposal, the essential outlines of the scenario took shape and allowed the composer to form “a highly personal vision” of Akhnaten and his era. Why did Philip Glass choose Akhnaten as the topic for his third opera—a figure so distant in time from the protagonists of his first two operas and so obscure in comparison to them? Glass opted to cast the pharaoh as a countertenor (one of several neo-Baroque touches to this score). Free. (The Met presented Satyagraha in 2011, and back in 1976 Glass and director Robert Wilson famously financed their own two-night production of … The HD broadcasts are supported by Toll Brothers, America’s luxury home builder®. Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo takes on the title role of one of the 20th century’s most powerful musical masterpieces.. Starring as the ancient Egyptian pharaoh who attempted to radically alter his society, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo headlines this performance from the Live in HD series. The fact that Akhnaten had even existed lay buried for millennia. A 1984 work has its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in a spellbinding production, starring Anthony Roth Costanzo. With Karen Kamensek, Joyce DiDonato, Zachary James, Aaron Blake. Composer. "The Metropolitan Opera HD Live" Philip Glass: Akhnaten (TV Episode 2019) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. Experience composer Philip Glass’ visionary masterpiece portraying the impact of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhnaten as he rises to the throne. As he writes in Words Without Music, his more recent memoir, Akhnaten “became much more interesting than Oedipus. Learn more and start a seven-day free trial: bit.ly/3hkNWFy Akhnaten’s Hymn to the Sun provides a moment of radiant A major at the center, but the looming presence of A minor—the key in which the opera begins and ends—“stretch[es] over the score, and over the theater, like a shroud,” to quote the Village Voice critic Leighton Kerner. Met titles In. To see some of Glass’ composing at work watch Anthony Roth Costanzo as Akhnaten singing an excerpt from Hymn to the Sun. Learn More: bit.ly/2ShlEiz According to Shalom Goldman, a professor of religion and ancient languages whom Glass enlisted as a scholarly consultant on this project, Akhnaten’s “rebellion against the massive weight of tradition encompassed religion, statecraft, art, and language; and in each of these areas he attempted revolutionary innovations.” At the time a graduate student at New York University, Goldman worked with Glass to compile the collage of primary-text sources that make up Akhnaten’s unusual libretto. Akhnaten Stress Ball. Met Opera on Demand delivers instant access to more than 700 Met performances, including Live in HD videos, classic telecasts and radio broadcasts. Our website has been optimized for viewing in the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. This playful white stress ball was inspired by the jugglers in the Met Opera’s production of Glass’s Akhnaten. Directed by Gary Halvorson. Digital support of The Met: Live in HD is provided by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Philip Glass. Stars Anthony Roth Costanzo in the title role. Akhnaten originated as a commission from Stuttgart Opera, and because the 1984 world premiere would take place while the company’s main house was being renovated, Glass’s orchestral forces would need to fit in a smaller pit space. The Met: Live in HD is supported by Rolex. Ticket on-sale date for general public will be announced in summer 2021. Anthony Roth Costanzo stars in the title role of the Metropolitan Opera's production of Philip Glass' Akhnaten. When Glass was in search of a subject for his third “portrait” opera, it was an even more controversial interpretation of the pharaoh’s significance that initially inspired him to consider Akhnaten. And there is a fourth language, which signifies another reason for Glass’s fascination with the figure of Akhnaten: ancient Hebrew, for the choral setting of Psalm 104 sung off stage as a counterpart to the Hymn to the Sun. Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo reprises his celebrated turn as the revolutionary pharaoh Akhnaten, with mezzo-soprano Rihab Chaieb as his wife and queen, Nefertiti. Download the new iPad app to watch on your TV with Apple TV via AirPlay. Portions in English, German, and Spanish {{synopsisController.castingDateText}} ... Find The Metropolitan Opera on … Anthony Roth Costanzo, Zachary James Lead The Best Met Production of the Year. He decided to downsize by doing without the entire violin section. One of the biggest hits of the 2019–20 season, Phelim McDermott’s Met-premiere production of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten—created in collaboration with Improbable—combined stunning visuals, spellbinding movement, and a troupe of expert jugglers. The inventive use of percussion (timpani omitted, also for space reasons) and combinations of wind and brass moreover allow for richly contrasted textures. in the chronology that the opera uses), longstanding traditions of artistic expression gave way to unprecedented stylistic changes—such as tender, naturalistic depictions of the pharaoh with his wife, Nefertiti, and their daughters. Akhnaten, by Philip Glass, continues through Dec. 7 at the Metropolitan Opera. He established Aten as the supreme god, overturning the traditional polytheistic hierarchy and disbanding the class of priests whose power derived from rival gods. Glass made a virtue of the lack of violins by drawing out the darker colors that result. Egyptian pharaoh seized the composer’s imagination as a fitting counterpart in that he represented the realm of religion and would lend historical perspective to a trilogy whose other two subjects were drawn from the modern era. Photo: Karen Almond/Met Opera Somewhere in this world of excess is a desert spa … How to represent a figure “so unusual, even unique, as to be virtually unprecedented in Egyptian, and therefore human, history”? Metropolitan Opera 2019-20 Review: Akhnaten. During his relatively brief, 17-year reign (from 1375 to 1358 B.C.E. Karen Almond / Met Opera The melancholy opera Akhnaten, with its oracular texts and elegantly cool music by Philip Glass, seems an unlikely candidate for … Patrons, 2020–21 Subscribers, Members ($150 Supporting level and above), and audience members with money on account or who donated their canceled performance tickets are eligible to purchase single tickets now. But the most radical transformation by far was of religious ideology. Akhnaten originated as a commission from Stuttgart Opera, and because the 1984 world premiere would take place while the company’s main house was being renovated, Glass’s orchestral forces would need to fit in a smaller pit space. With a new production of “Akhnaten,” a classic trilogy by Philip Glass has finally been surveyed at the Metropolitan Opera. Patrons, 2020–21 Subscribers, Members ($150 Supporting level and above), and audience members with money on account or who donated their canceled performance tickets are eligible to purchase single tickets now. “We know Akhnaten as a man of ideas and, to me, the entire history of humanity is a history of ideas, of culture,” Glass reflected in his 1987 memoir, Music by Philip Glass. Various. The composer has compared the perception of ambivalence that results from his harmonic language to the kind of optical illusion associated with the paintings of Josef Albers, “where you could look at it two ways, but not both ways at once; it can’t resolve itself.” Akhnaten, he adds, “was my first extension out of a triadic harmonic language that had been fairly simple up until then.”. Recent Posts Great Performances at … In the third scene of Act III, with its dramatic time shift to the present, the narrator additionally reads excerpts from a Fodor’s travel guide about the ruins of the ancient city. Philip Glass’s masterpiece of ancient Egypt has its Met premiere November 8 and runs through December 7, in a mesmerizing new production by Phelim McDermott. The opera’s tonal palette and use of thematic devices identified with characters or actions mark a departure from Glass’s earlier practice. Anthony Roth Costanzo stars in the title role, and Karen Kamensek conducts. His experiments with polytonality (presenting more than one key at the same time, creating multiple harmonic centers of gravity) impart a greater feeling of ambiguity. Credit... Eva O'Leary for The New York Times Philip Glass. Synopsis: Akhnaten Select a language to update the synopsis text. 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