Tag Archives: Philip Glass

Akhnaten, English National Opera, 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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Orphée by Philip Glass, English National Opera, ENO, 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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Akhnaten, English National Opera, London Coliseum, 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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Satyagraha, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, 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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Akhnaten, English National Opera, ENO, London Coliseum, 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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The Trial, Music Theatre Wales, Linbury Studio, ROH, 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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Satyagraha, English National Opera, London Coliseum, 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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The Perfect American, English National Opera, London Coliseum, 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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Einstein on the Beach, Barbican Theatre, 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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In the Penal Colony, Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House, 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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Satyagraha, English National Opera, ENO at the London Coliseum, 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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