Tag Archives: Philip Glass
Posted on 19 March 2023
Open are the double doors of the horizon/ Unlocked are its bolts. Thus intones the Scribe at the start of Philip Glass’s opera Akhnaten about an extraordinary king of Egypt. The staging starts with the funeral of his father Amenhotep III, and the transfer of power. It ends with modern archaeologists examining ancient fragments, and a …
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Posted on 18 November 2019
Glass’s opera, based on a film by Jean Cocteau, is the final one in ENO’s Orpheus quartet, and Netia Jones intriguing production reveals Orphée’s mysterious wanderings on the edges of death and immortality. Terrific performances by Jennifer France as The Princess and Nicky Spence as her chauffeur — my review in The Article.
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Posted on 12 February 2019
Egypt, eighteenth dynasty: this starts with the laying to rest of Amenhotep III, and ends with his grandson Tutankhamun receiving the regalia of office before stepping into his inheritance. In the meantime, Tutankhamun’s father Amenhotep IV temporarily overturned the Egyptian religion with his monotheistic cult of the Aten (the sun disc), which he personally sanctified …
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Posted on 2 February 2018
Non-violence — is there a positive word for it? In creating a proactive term for non-violence in action Gandhi invented satyagraha from two Sanskrit roots, satya meaning truth, and agraha meaning holding on to. It is the underlying theme for the three acts of this opera, representing past, present and future, but standing outside time …
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Posted on 5 March 2016
This final opera in Philip Glass’s trilogy on men who changed history — Einstein, Gandhi, Akhnaten — last seen here in 1987, well deserves Phelim McDermott’s spectacular new production. Akhnaten may not be a household name like the other two, but this eighteenth dynasty Egyptian king who temporarily overturned the Egyptian religion with his monotheistic …
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Posted on 11 October 2014
In Kafka’s novel The Trial an ordinary intelligent man is caught up in a process to which he earnestly hopes he can find a clear end, and this musical realisation by Philip Glass, with a libretto by Christopher Hampton, captures the comedy and close observation of the original. There could, I suppose, be a temptation …
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Posted on 7 December 2013
The performance on 6th December 2013 was a special occasion, quite unplanned. Philip Glass’s paean to the peaceful revolution embodied by Mahatma Gandhi, with its allusions to Martin Luther King, whose back-view we see in Act III, speaking on a podium, was preceded by a commemoration for Nelson Mandela, who had died just 24 hours …
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Posted on 2 June 2013
The scenes in this new Philip Glass opera are set mainly in Southern California where Walt Disney lived, worked and died, but there is an early scene in Marceline, Missouri where he spent his childhood. Or did he? Certainly he looked back on his four or five years in Marceline as giving him everything, but …
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Posted on 7 May 2012
When this work was created in 1976 the musical world was full of new inventiveness, and this opera — if that’s the right term — was very much in the avant garde. Five hours of theatre without an interval, allowing one to enter and exit at will, was a new experience and new experiences were in vogue. …
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Posted on 16 September 2010
The music was rhythmically intense, as one would expect from Glass, and its energy carried the strange plot forward.
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Posted on 26 February 2010
The production … has a rather ethereal quality, and as a friend of mine said, “I was left humming peaceful thoughts all the way home”.
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