Few operas can cast such a spell as Philip Glass’s Akhnaten. Glass’s music insinuates itself into the ear and stays there. The unfolding of a visionary Egyptian pharaoh’s rise and fall lodges in the mind’s eye. Akhnaten has almost achieved classic status now, but it still delivers the haunting impact that made its British premiere, 34 years ago, one of English National Opera’s most memorable nights.
Phelim McDermott’s 2016 production, now in its first revival, lives up to that company inheritance. His staging captures the attention from the start, as the shadows of Egyptian wall paintings come gradually alive on Tom Pye’s multitiered set. The production’s discipline – essential to the work’s aesthetic – rarely falters as the funerary and coronation rituals take human, but expressionless, shape and the pharaoh becomes transported by his new, monotheistic sun-god worship.
Stage pictures are painted with balletic poise. Act two is especially memorable, as the red robes of the pharaoh and his queen intertwine in their act two duet and Akhnaten makes his rapt ascent across the backdrop of the sun. The central role in the staging of the jugglers from the Gandini Juggling Company is a brilliantly inventive counterpoint, visually and symbolically, to the general stateliness. The jugglers’ routines echo the insinuating lines of Glass’s score and provide an energised visual contrast to the opera’s declamations.
In the title role, the countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo acts with fabulous control and sings with an otherworldly bareness of tone that captures the pharaoh’s increasing remoteness from his warring nation. Katie Stevenson as Akhnaten’s wife Nefertiti and Rebecca Bottone as his mother Queen Tye weave richer vocal textures that convey the growing unease around the cult of Aten. Keel Watson stands out vocally as an earthy and human Aye, who seems to have strayed into upper Egypt from a New Orleans mardi gras. Chorus and orchestra under Karen Kamensek are unflagging.
Glass will always have his detractors, but in the end it is the poignancy that makes Akhnaten a special opera. It may depict a long-vanished world, but Glass’s obsessive evocation of a self-destructive civilisation seems very contemporary.
• At Coliseum, London, until 7 March
