Before I begin singing praises of the Metropolitan Opera’s Live Broadcast of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten (he chose to spell it like that. There is an alternate Akhenaten) I would like to clear the air that the only Wagner opera I can stomach and my posterior can tolerate is his Flying Dutchman. My childhood friend Lillian Guridi who lives in Barcelona travels often to see The Rings in Bayreuth.

 I could not find anybody interested in accompanying me to the 9:45 screening at the Cineplex Scotia Theater on Saturday but I felt comfort that Guridi was there in spirit with me as she was attending the screening of Akhnaten in whatever hour 9:45 translated to her Barcelona.

The first opera I ever attended was the Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. I was 8 and my parents took me to the Parque Cornelio Saavedra in Buenos Aires to see it. I could not figure out how miraculously a city, a room, another city would spring out of the thin air.  

In 1964 I had sophisticated Argentine girl friend of Viennese extraction who told me I was uncouth and uncultured. She said she had a remedy. She took me to the Teatro Colón and we saw Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel. From that point on while I was not an out an out opera fan I learned to tolerate it.

About 9 years ago the Met featured Handel’s Rodelinda one Saturday afternoon. In invited my friends, designer Graham Walker and Architect Abraham Rogatnick for lunch and snacks and we listened to this fine work with my very good sound system in conjunction with the tuner. 

In Handel operas, countertenors are a given. I did not know then that I would be exposed to a much more modern opera with a countertenor and of course that’s Akhnaten which would feature Anthony Roth Consanzo.

I became far more interested when some years on my way to a commercial photography session in New Westminster I was listening to Saturday Afternoon at the Opera on CBC Radio (sponsored by Texaco). The interview guest was a woman I had no knowledge of called Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was asked which was her favourite opera, with a lawyer as a protagonist. She said it was Johann Strauss II’s The Fledermaus which had so inept a lawyer that his client went to jail. And then she told a story that pretty well has endeared me to oper and to RBG since. It seems she was a young lawyer on her first case. She was staying at Washington DC’s venerable Willard. She was nervous. She took the elevator on her way to court (I believe it was the Supreme Court).The elevator stopped and in came Maria Callas with her poodle. Ginsburg told the interviewer, “I knew then I was going to win.”

In 1983 when Glass premiered Akhnaten I had no idea of its existence of who Glass was. But by the early 90s when I developed an interest in ballet and modern dance I discovered that Glass’s music was a favourite of local choreographers. Both my granddaughters dance to his music and my oldest Rebecca when she was around 14 sat down at the piano to play her version of Glass. To my ears it was pretty good.

I have wanted to see this opera since and I got my wish on Saturday. One of my reasons for this interest is that since I was a boy I was interested in swashbuckler films and books, the Lone Ranger, Achilles and ancient Egypt and in particular Akhenaten who had the novel idea of believing in one god. I was further interested in his mysterious body shape. Was it a disease?

The broadcast was in a large room (the second one as the first one was full) occupied mostly by women with grey hair and a few men with hair and without.

I chatted with the woman sitting next to me about this. She simply said, as a matter of fact, “We are all contemporaries of Philip Glass. What would you expect?”

The show on the huge screen in a room which was at the right temperature (the pleasant man in charge of helping the attendees with walkers asked us if it was too cold, and it was.) told me his favourite opera was Carmen. The sound was superb not too loud as we were not part of the Avengers crowd.

Much was written that Anthony Roth Constanzo suffered a prolonged Brazilian wax job and that he apperas naked in the beginning of the opera. I belive that the folks at the Met dispensed with that feature for its live Broadcast

Of the opera itself (I am no music critic) I can point out that Conductor Karen Kamensek (aided very well by Production and Associate Director Phelim McDermott) had a most unusual orchestra that had no violins. When Glass was pressed for space in small orchestra pits for his opera in 1983 he banished the violins. Thus it was unusual that the concertmaster for the evening was the violist.

All action (except for the almost constant juggling) was done in slow motion. If you are the kind of person who is turned off by duo arias featuring singers of hefty weight there was none of that. There was only one aria and countertenor Roth Constanzo sang it in English (the only one in that language). 

There was little singing which I would simply define almost wordlessas choir music.

Nefertiti was played and sung by African/American J’NaiBridges, a Tacoma resident who had never appeared at the Met!

Queen Tye (Akhnaten’s mother) was a solid (slim she is) constant presence for the duration of the show. Dísella Lárusdoóttir is Icelandic. In those very interesting in-between act interviews she was a hoot.

One very unusual element of this opera is the performance of opera bass singer and actor Zachary James (Amehotep, The Scribe) who never sang but narrated an explanation of what was going on in his magnificent voice. It helped I would add that he is a fit 7ft tall man!

The costumes, Kevin Pollard, the lighting, Bruno Poet, the choreography, Sean Gandini (the head of the Gandini Juggling Troupe) and the set design, Tom Pye are what make this opera not be opera.

It was much more than opera. It was a spectacle for which I have not been able to find comparison.

I urge anybody reading this to buy tickets as Akhnaten will be repeated many times in February.

One of the most pleasing facts about going to a Cineplex theatre early in the morning is that the room did not smell of popcorn!