He's supposed to be a minimalist, but the production of Akhnaten we just saw, a simultaneous broadcast of the matinee of the Metropolitan Opera, was hardly minimalist.
Samuel Becket is a minimalist. His stages are bare, and the lives of his characters are pared down to nothing. Philip Glass writes long, loud, elaborate, pretentious operas.
I went to hear Akhnaten mainly out of curiosity, not expecting to enjoy it, and my expectations were fulfilled. What is there to enjoy except the stage effects surrounding the production? The music is monotonous. The opera has virtually no plot, no characters, no drama. It's slow-moving, pompous, and bombastic. Some people call it hypnotic. I don't go the opera to be hypnotized. I go, if I do at all, to be overwhelmed by the beauty of the music.
Yet if you read about Glass, you are exposed to a story of phenomenal success. He is prolific, widely performed, and highly regarded. I would call it a case of the emperor's new clothes, but Glass isn't naked. He's overdressed, like the singers in this production, in outlandish costumes that mainly have little or nothing to do with ancient Egypt.
Okay, I'm not an opera fan. Mainly I see opera productions as money misspent. Even though my wife and I paid about a hundred dollars for our two seats at the mere broadcast of the opera, and the people who go to the real thing pay many times more than that, we are told that the broadcasts are subsidized, and that the Metropolitan Opera needs contributions to keep going. In a country swarming with homeless people (and a world swarming with hungry refugees), they have a nerve to present themselves as a charity.
Rather than spend millions of dollars on super-lavish productions, they should stage the operas frugally, in a manner that lets the music come out. After all, the music is what it's about, not the costumes, sets, and special effects.
A few years ago we heard a production of Cosi fan tutte in the opera house of Lyons. The singers were fine, the orchestra was high level, and the staging was simple. Who needs anything more?
But if you put Akhnaten without all the flimflam, you 'd see it for the empty thing that it is.
Samuel Becket is a minimalist. His stages are bare, and the lives of his characters are pared down to nothing. Philip Glass writes long, loud, elaborate, pretentious operas.
I went to hear Akhnaten mainly out of curiosity, not expecting to enjoy it, and my expectations were fulfilled. What is there to enjoy except the stage effects surrounding the production? The music is monotonous. The opera has virtually no plot, no characters, no drama. It's slow-moving, pompous, and bombastic. Some people call it hypnotic. I don't go the opera to be hypnotized. I go, if I do at all, to be overwhelmed by the beauty of the music.
Yet if you read about Glass, you are exposed to a story of phenomenal success. He is prolific, widely performed, and highly regarded. I would call it a case of the emperor's new clothes, but Glass isn't naked. He's overdressed, like the singers in this production, in outlandish costumes that mainly have little or nothing to do with ancient Egypt.Okay, I'm not an opera fan. Mainly I see opera productions as money misspent. Even though my wife and I paid about a hundred dollars for our two seats at the mere broadcast of the opera, and the people who go to the real thing pay many times more than that, we are told that the broadcasts are subsidized, and that the Metropolitan Opera needs contributions to keep going. In a country swarming with homeless people (and a world swarming with hungry refugees), they have a nerve to present themselves as a charity.
Rather than spend millions of dollars on super-lavish productions, they should stage the operas frugally, in a manner that lets the music come out. After all, the music is what it's about, not the costumes, sets, and special effects.
A few years ago we heard a production of Cosi fan tutte in the opera house of Lyons. The singers were fine, the orchestra was high level, and the staging was simple. Who needs anything more?
But if you put Akhnaten without all the flimflam, you 'd see it for the empty thing that it is.
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