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If Reader theater critic Lee Sandlin had tried a bit harder I am sure he could have come to a better understanding of Philip Glass’s and Mary Zimmerman’s “unreadable” Akhnaten at the Chicago Opera Theater (July 28 review). Sandlin also complains that (a) the action is presented in highly formalized tableaux, but that the specifics are wholly mysterious, (b) Akhnaten himself sings in such a high voice range that it’s as if he’s from another galaxy, and (c) he is seen cuddling blissfully, unpharaohlike, with his children.
The message isn’t that we stare uncomprehendingly at the past. Glass and Zimmerman’s opera shows how Akhnaten’s life and creations, like his scribe’s, like our own, will ultimately recede into ruins. But it shows as well the somewhat reassuring truth that something from each of our lives will nonetheless reach into the future for thousands of years and touch others in ways we can never know.
