Goines On: Up and down with Akhnaten

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Goines wasn’t an opera buff, but he much enjoyed the live HD broadcast of a NY Metropolitan Opera performance for which he and Mrs. Goines had driven to a Chapel Hill movie theater over the weekend. The Met had performed Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, its musical score so “different,” even professional opera reviewers might feel challenged to rise to the occasion. So, what could Goines possibly say? What would he even title a review?
    “Ghosts of the Ancient World”? Akhnaten is supposed to become pharaoh IV to his recently deceased father, Amenhotep III, but after the ritualistic performance of a ceremony specified in the Book of the Dead, during which Amenhotep’s heart is weighed against a feather to see whether it is light enough for him to travel into the afterlife, Akhnaten offends custom by declaring polytheism dead in favor of worship of the Sun God Aten only. As a seeming symbolic revolt against this act, Glass employs Amenhotep III’s ghost (portrayed by Zachary James) as a narrator throughout the remainder of the opera.
    “Ungrateful Dead”? The priests and populace later revolt to restore the gods whom Akhnaten abolished at the beginning of his reign, murdering Akhnaten and repeating the opening ritual.

    “Waxed for Naught?” The Goineses’ research had prepared them for the singer portraying Akhnaten, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, to make his entrance completely naked, for which Costanzo regularly underwent a total body waxing. So they were surprised when Costanzo entered wearing a sort of “swaddling cloth.” On their drive home, they surmised that the Met had gone PG for broadcast to the hinterlands, where there might be children present and adults less sophisticated than those of New York City. Goines would write to the Met to try to verify that, and to learn why no mention of the cover-up was mentioned by the host during the first intermission. But the host did appreciate Costanzo’s joke during his interview that his waxing treatments had led to his becoming a countertenor in the first place.

    “Nefertiti in Tacoma”? One of the host’s revelations particularly delighted Goines. The singer playing Akhnaten’s wife, Nefertiti (J’Nai Bridges), had grown up in Tacoma, Washington, in a home displaying posters of Queen Nefertiti, to encourage her about being a person of color in a mostly white society.

    “Juggling Acts”? Another revelation was that the ubiquitous deployment of jugglers in the production was based on archaeological evidence. And, in the host’s interview of narrator Zachary James, he revealed that all of the members of the cast and crew were expected to learn how to juggle. This rather frightened James (who is an imposing figure – 6 ft.-6 in. tall), because, he confessed, he hadn’t played ball or catch as a child. He had been a piano kid.

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