The collaboration between Lucinda Childs and Philip Glass goes back a number of years. He also wrote the score – performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble – for Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi, described on Glass’s website as “ an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds - urban life and technology versus the environment”. In addition to his operas, symphonies, and compositions for his own ensemble, he has collaborated with a wide range of artists – from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen and David Bowie – he has written music for experimental theatre, and scores for Academy Award-winning films such as Stephen Daldry’s The Hours and Martin Scorsese’s Kundun. Philip Glass is regarded as one of the most interesting and versatile composers of his time. Akhnaten premiered at the Staatstheater Stuttgart on the 24th of March, 1984. The production did, however, go ahead and was filmed for screening online, enabling not only local audiences to enjoy it, but audiences around the world as well.Ĭreated in 1984, Akhnaten is the third of a trilogy of Glass’s operas inspired by important personalities or great moments in history – the preceding works being Einstein on the Beach, written in 1976 and directed by Robert Wilson, and Satyagraha, a 1980 work which traces Mahatma Gandhi’s development of non-violent protests as a political tool. Originally intended to run for three performances as of 1st November, Akhnaten wasn’t able to be performed in front of an audience, due to the enforced closure of theatres during the November lockdown in France.

Opéra de Nice Côte d’Azur has opened the 2020/21 season with a spectacular work – the opera Akhnaten by contemporary composer Philip Glass, produced and choreographed by Lucinda Childs

Akhnaten la opera