Akhnaten by Philip Glass. Metropolitan Opera, New York, Spring 2022.
“OPEN ARE the double doors of the horizon; unlocked are its bolts,” ring out the first words of Philip Glass’s opera Akhnaten. Beginning the funeral rite of the pharaoh Amenhotep III, sometime in the fourteenth century BCE, they are spoken by the spirit of Amenhotep himself, with his earthly body lying nearby in shrouds. Briefly we see the long historical trajectory of the body, but in reverse. The enshrouded specimen is at first surrounded by white-coated scientists, who prod and inspect with head lamps. The scientists then disrobe, revealing themselves as a party of ancient funerary attendants. Glass’s hallmark whirling arpeggios continue softly, backed by a few portentous brass gusts. The pharaoh’s removed heart is revealed, and the music stops. “This king flies away from you, ye mortals. He is not of the earth; he is of the sky!” cries out Amenhotep. The stakes for the opera are set, and they are high: not just life and death, but all of heaven, earth, and their arrangements.
The opera’s story is almost traditional in its simplicity and structure: a three-act rise and fall of Amenhotep’s son Akhnaten. Following his father’s death, Akhnaten accepts the mantle of pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt. He announces a radically new monotheistic religion devoted to the universal sun
