One of the strangest manifestations of Western culture’s fascination with Ancient Egypt is Philip Glass’s 1984 opera Akhnaten. Its subject – sort of – is the pharaoh who, in the 14th century BCE, forced his subjects to abandon their multiple gods in favour of one, Aten, of which, surprise, surprise, he was the earthly representative.
The opera doesn’t exactly invite the audience in, as it’s sung in a variety of mostly biblical and pre-biblical languages, with no translations provided, but with a cumbersome English narration that offers little enlightenment. Yet in Phelim McDermott’s English National Opera production, first seen in 2016, Akhnaten becomes an eccentric kind of performance art, an ever-changing sequence of stage pictures, simultaneously gaudy and glamorous, mysterious and nonsensical.
