send in the clowns
by
Douglas Messerli
Philip
Glass in association with Shalom Goldman, Robert Israel, Richard Ridell, and
Jerome Robbins (libretto), Philip Glass (music) Akhnaten: An Opera in Three Acts / Los Angeles, LAOpera, at the
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion / the performance Howard Fox and I saw was a matinee
on Sunday, November 13, 2016
For
me, it’s admittedly hard to know quite what I feel about Philip Glass’s operas,
particularly the three signature works, Einstein
on the Beach (1976), Satyagrapha (1980),
and Akhnaten (1984), all three which,
since visiting the last opera yesterday at the LAOpera company’s production, I
have now seen in excellent productions.
Surely they are all beautiful pageants,
with the chordal collection of the composer’s repeated and shifting motifs often
creating sounds of shimmering perfection. In all three productions, the sets
and costumes were innovative and, in Akhnaten, quite stupendous in their effects. In
all the productions I’ve seen, the singers and other figures were superior.
Particularly, in Akhnaten, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and
mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges sang quite brilliantly, with the LAOpera Chorus
performing at the highest level (despite the unfortunate collapse, in early
scene of the opera, of a chorus member, which required several of her fellow
singers to help her off; we can only pray that she was not seriously hurt.).
I feel strange to appear to be expressing
dissatisfaction with that fact, since I have long expressed my love of just
such a narrative technique in the works of Djuna Barnes, and in the filmmaking
of Sergei Paradjanov, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and others. Perhaps it’s just
not as effective on stage, particularly when accounting a rather exciting tale
such as the Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaten’s fascinatingly short life. In fiction
you can combine, as does Barnes, the “stops” in the fiction with a strong
narrative overlay, using the temporary tableaux as evidence for the effects of
the story. In film, directors such as Paradjanov link their tableaux vivants into a series of
narrative events. But in theater such as this, in which is no true narrative
structure, the time-stopped scenes become mere spectacle.
Perhaps it is appropriate, at least in the
early and late scenes, to bathe the new pharaoh’s, and, later, dead pharaoh’s
experiences in the slow and measured pace of rituals, letting the driving
music, most excitingly presented in tympani and brass (there are no violins in
this darker-sounding work) create the inner narrative energy. This Egypt is
still a dark place of priests who worship dozens of deities, all of whom must
be given their due before the new King can be crowned. And it is not accidental
that for the first 20 minutes of this opera, the work’s hero is entirely
speechless, often while nude—in short, vulnerable and even unprepared for his
soon-to-be glorious clothing. Indeed, this King remains partially naked, and
therefore, an easy target throughout much of his life.
It is also clear that the drop-dead love
duet between Akhnaten and his wife Nefertiti might not allow for more action
than the two walking slowly across stage, each swathed in an endless train of
red robes that become intertwined. After all, Tristan and Isolde often stand—at
least in most productions—in near motionless scenes to sing their great love
duets.
Yet even later events when Akhnaten sings,
quite agitatedly about his vision of a new city to celebrate his sun god, or,
when he and his family are coming under attack from the Egyptian citizenry for
his insistence on a near-monotheistic worship (scholars now argue, that, at
least in the early years, Akhanaten’s world was much more open for individuals
to maintain some of their older beliefs), or when the Pharaoh actually comes
under attack, being killed in front of his wife, mother, and six daughters do
we really need the same slow pace?
Akhnaten and his world, indeed, are
difficult for our time to comprehend, since most of his city, art, and communications
were destroyed by his son Tutankhamun and the later pharaoh Horemhab. But it
would have been nice, just once, to see these figures behave like real human
beings instead of historical ghosts. And, despite the long length of this
opera, I’d have given up the jugglers any day just to hear another, more
revealing aria by Akhnaten and Nefertti.
Surely they are all beautiful pageants,
with the chordal collection of the composer’s repeated and shifting motifs often
creating sounds of shimmering perfection. In all three productions, the sets
and costumes were innovative and, in Akhnaten, quite stupendous in their effects. In
all the productions I’ve seen, the singers and other figures were superior.
Particularly, in Akhnaten, countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo and
mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges sang quite brilliantly, with the LAOpera Chorus
performing at the highest level (despite the unfortunate collapse, in early
scene of the opera, of a chorus member, which required several of her fellow
singers to help her off; we can only pray that she was not seriously hurt.).
Despite the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion’s
continued acoustical problems, the LAOpera orchestra, this time under the baton
of the young wunderkind conductor/composer Matthew Aucoin, came through well,
except in a very few instances where, from my balcony position, we heard more
tuba than other instrumentation. The audience, far more diverse than usual and,
seemingly, quite sophisticated and eager to enjoy this production, clearly took
immediate pleasure in it.
And yet…in all three works, two of them
sung in ancient languages, and the earlier work often singing the language of
counting, my companion Howard and I both felt a kind of ennui as the singers
moved through space in snail-pace deliberateness, shifting from opera’s
more-standard narrative sweep to an opera made up of images closer to tableaux vivants than to normative
theater.
I feel strange to appear to be expressing
dissatisfaction with that fact, since I have long expressed my love of just
such a narrative technique in the works of Djuna Barnes, and in the filmmaking
of Sergei Paradjanov, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and others. Perhaps it’s just
not as effective on stage, particularly when accounting a rather exciting tale
such as the Egyptian pharaoh Akhnaten’s fascinatingly short life. In fiction
you can combine, as does Barnes, the “stops” in the fiction with a strong
narrative overlay, using the temporary tableaux as evidence for the effects of
the story. In film, directors such as Paradjanov link their tableaux vivants into a series of
narrative events. But in theater such as this, in which is no true narrative
structure, the time-stopped scenes become mere spectacle.
While Einstein
featured the abstract, the mathematical and scientific theories of the
thinker, and Satyagrapha dealt with
the sometimes equally abstract world of politics, Akhnaten’s is a world of
religion, and a radical new religion to boot.*
Perhaps it is appropriate, at least in the
early and late scenes, to bathe the new pharaoh’s, and, later, dead pharaoh’s
experiences in the slow and measured pace of rituals, letting the driving
music, most excitingly presented in tympani and brass (there are no violins in
this darker-sounding work) create the inner narrative energy. This Egypt is
still a dark place of priests who worship dozens of deities, all of whom must
be given their due before the new King can be crowned. And it is not accidental
that for the first 20 minutes of this opera, the work’s hero is entirely
speechless, often while nude—in short, vulnerable and even unprepared for his
soon-to-be glorious clothing. Indeed, this King remains partially naked, and
therefore, an easy target throughout much of his life. It is also clear that the drop-dead love
duet between Akhnaten and his wife Nefertiti might not allow for more action
than the two walking slowly across stage, each swathed in an endless train of
red robes that become intertwined. After all, Tristan and Isolde often stand—at
least in most productions—in near motionless scenes to sing their great love
duets.
I can even understand why Akhnaten’s
great hymn to the sun, a lovely, quiet piece which Costanzo sings in the very
front of the stage—again, while appearing naked, with a gossamer robe to which
are appliquéd breasts and, now, a vagina where he real penis once was located—does
not require nor even want much movement.
Yet even later events when Akhnaten sings,
quite agitatedly about his vision of a new city to celebrate his sun god, or,
when he and his family are coming under attack from the Egyptian citizenry for
his insistence on a near-monotheistic worship (scholars now argue, that, at
least in the early years, Akhanaten’s world was much more open for individuals
to maintain some of their older beliefs), or when the Pharaoh actually comes
under attack, being killed in front of his wife, mother, and six daughters do
we really need the same slow pace?
To somewhat entertain us, director
Phelim McDermott sends in the clowns—in this a team of British jugglers who
throw balls and other objects, mostly circular—paralleling, of course, the
father and mother sun from which Akhnaten argues he has emanated. Yet even
their actions are often slowed down as they are forced to slowly crawl across
the stage floor and move gradually in and out of the singers. And when they do
suddenly spring into actions, quite adeptly tossing their balls and clubs
through the air, they appear as more of a distraction than an integral element
of Glass’s work.
Strangely, while Glass’s score hardly
even lets up in its driving momentum, the fact that he generally prefers to
skip stage action or slow it down to such a gradual motion that it appears they
are moving in a kind of dream space, he also enervates his characters to such a
degree that they appear, themselves, to be unreadable hieroglyphs, and become
difficult to comprehend in real life.
Akhnaten and his world, indeed, are
difficult for our time to comprehend, since most of his city, art, and communications
were destroyed by his son Tutankhamun and the later pharaoh Horemhab. But it
would have been nice, just once, to see these figures behave like real human
beings instead of historical ghosts. And, despite the long length of this
opera, I’d have given up the jugglers any day just to hear another, more
revealing aria by Akhnaten and Nefertti.
I can only commend LAOpera, however,
for staging this stunningly scored work. Perhaps, in the future, we can get a
less mannered presentation of it.
*I
should add that, although the opera seems to give tribute to Akhnaten for his
attempt to change his country from polytheism to monotheism, and Freud, in his
important study From Moses to Monotheism attempts
to connect those changes with Akhnaten’s rule, I am, personally speaking, not
so sure I mightn’t prefer the early Egyptian and later Greek and Roman
polytheism, which I recount in several of the essays of this volume. These
people, at least, lived with a far larger ability to assimilate different
religious views. As we know, monotheism most always tended to want to destroy
all other religious viewpoints, a history of religious monotheism which remains
with us even today, and helped to give rise to groups such as ISIS and even the
American Klu Klux Klan.
Los Angeles,
November 14, 2016
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