“Those old pharaohs must have been wonderful fellows,” remarks an English duffer in Agatha Christie’s Poirot novel Death on the Nile. The crime writer was married to a Middle East archaeologist so knew her khet from her ka. Someone at English National Opera had the wit to remind us of that questionable insight by quoting it in the programme for its new staging of Akhnaten, directed by Phelim McDermott and his company, Improbable, conducted by Karen Kamensek. It raised a smile before an evening of high seriousness, luxuriant in hieratic beauty, musical prowess and, at times, astonishing theatre.
ENO has been loyal to Philip Glass (born 1937) since giving the UK premiere of this work in 1985. In David Freeman’s production, the stage was covered in tons of sand. The narrative of the young pharaoh building a new empire and a new monotheistic religion – with a disastrous outcome – was clearly articulated. The work, specifically Glass’s music, caused a storm. The division between European “school of Boulez”, to use a broad if inadequate phrase, and the new, repetitive American minimalism represented by Glass and Steve Reich, was absolute. Many critics at the time responded as if this “new age baroque” style and use of melody were not mere aural toothache but total extraction. Glass still provokes that response but his following has reached cult levels. Attitudes have softened, if not entirely. Three decades on, it’s just about possible to say, aloud and in the same breath, that you like Boulez and Glass without automatically being derided as a numbskull (or not to your face).
McDermott’s production, skilfully designed by Tom Pye with costumes by Kevin Pollard and lighting by Bruno Poet, emphasises the work’s static formality. Most of it is sung in ancient Egyptian text, without surtitles. Glass is evoking a world, rather than offering a plot. The decision to make a virtue of slowness and ritual led to moments of great beauty: the wrapping and unwrapping of the dead and the living, the step by step clothing of Akhnaten (countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo) from starkers to statesman, the construction of a rising sun made with hand-held glowing bars. Imagine that self-help funerary guide to a happy hereafter, the Book of the Dead, come to life. Pye recreated its tiered imagery and quasi two-dimensional figures in profile along the back wall of the Coliseum stage, for the Act I ceremonial embalmment of Akhnaten’s predecessor.
A visual touchstone is the array of spheres of all sizes that represent the birth-death symbolism of the sun. A troupe of jugglers – an authentic note; they are to be found in tomb paintings – made a lasting impact. Amid the grandeur and inaction, and against the backdrop of the long, dark-hued (Glass uses no violins here) expanses of the score, the dancing balls were the only fast-moving ingredient. Top marks to Gandini Juggling, who only dropped them when they were meant to and to the tireless ENO orchestra who dropped none. Roth Costanzo, slight and wiry, has a piercing clarity of tone which he put to eerie, compelling effect as the strange, asexual (he is portrayed as a hermaphrodite) Akhnaten. He has just been nominated for the International Opera awards 2016, deservedly. Mezzo Emma Carrington made an outstanding ENO debut as Nefertiti. The trio in which she, Queen Tye (Rebecca Bottone) and Akhnaten appear as wordless ghosts conveys a sense of haunting and mournful regret.
The three hours passed quickly. Only the spoken English narration, together with modern updates of tourists and scientists examining tombs, veers towards cringeworthy. How clever of Glass to make each act shorter than the last. It should be a requirement of all opera. The rest of the cast, including Clive Bayley and James Cleverton, shone, while the ENO chorus blazed. Mark Wigglesworth, ENO music director, leapt to his feet when they took their bow on first night. Cheers for the survival, intact, of this threatened group of 44 singers have turned to a roar. Last week, chorus members won backing from the Performers’ Alliance All-Party Parliamentary Group. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has added his name in support of a full-time chorus. Proposed strike action has been suspended pending further talks.
• At the Coliseum, London until 18 March
