Interlude: An Interview with Akhnaten
In 1983, Philip Glass debuted his opera Akhnaten, a bold musical exploration of the pharaoh, his reign and his legacy in ancient Egypt. Now, Akhnaten returns with The Metropolitan Opera, New York, from November 8th to December 7th, 2019. It will be broadcast worldwide in cinemas. Find tickets to the live show here, and check your local cinemas for upcoming broadcasts.
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Wow, now that was a surprise!
My fascination with Akhnaten started with the MET-Opera staging which I saw somewhere around the end of June as part of MET’s Nigtly Opera Streams and I became what people call on Twitter a total “Akhnaten” freak.
Started reading the Amarna letters, studying the “Adapa and the South Wind” legend – and gathering information on Akhnaten’s times and Amarna.
These peregirnations have led me to on-line lectures on the Book of the Dead and Osiris by Ukrainian Egyptologyst Nikolai Tarasenko – and finally to your wonderful podcast series.
It is as if a gift to me, well deserved after such long roamings on the net.
As you can imagine I jumped right into the podcast series on Akhnaten, and I was wondering, does Dominic know Glass’s cosmic masterwork bordering on the mystical – yes, I bet he does, so will he mention it somewhere in the Akhnaten series of podcasts.
And you did!
A whole long interview with those singers whose “Akhnaten” roles I know so well by now (since June or July 2020 MET has shared the opera in its Nightly Opera Streams) twice, so far.
Wonderful, I am extremely grateful to you, Dominic and in these difficult pandemic-surge times in Warsaw you have made my night, and maybe even my week.
For all those who may have got interested in MET’s mesmerising staging of the opera there is good news – MET has recently as of March 2021 made the opera also available on demand.
So if you have seen it on one of the Nightly Opera Streams and just can’t live without it – it is there for a non expensive ticket on demand.
As a token of gratitude and prove I am spending my with thoughts of Akhnaten – a link to a clip I have made using the programme for animating faces recently made available by the myheritage site:
Akhnaten and Nefertiti Come to Live:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT14VtOeuo4
I am working on a clip with Tutankhamun’s animated face, now.
With large baskets of radiant grafitude,
Ivonna Nowicka