Akhenaten

From this resume, it might sound as if Glass's emphasis lies on the fragile and doomed quality of Akhenaten's idealism, but it seems to me that sexuality is an equally important theme. As in Jarman's screenplay, sexuality and the erotic tensions of relationships provide some of the motivation for Glass's operatic characters, though his heterosexual focus is very different. Glass removes Smenkhkare' from the opera in the same way as the gay writers sideline the royal women. Drama comes from conflicts within the relationships of Tiye, Akhenaten and Nefertiti instead of Smenkhkare', Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Glass puts this into the vocal writing. Akhenaten is sung by a counter-tenor, Nefertiti by a mezzo-soprano or contralto, and Tiye by a soprano. 'The voice crossings produce a purposely confusing effect, making it sometimes difficult for the listener to follow the separate parts', says Glass.²¹

' In stagings of the opera, this was reinforced by Tiye literally coming between Akhenaten and Nefertiti at crucial moments.

The opera's sexual situations originate in Akhenaten's pathologised body. Rely­ing once again on literal readings of the east Karnak colossi, productions of A/chnaten

make the king a hermaphrodite, with female breasts and male genitals, and his body an object of display. In Act I, scene 2 of the opera, Akhenaten is ritually lustrated by the priests before being crowned. He is stripped naked to reveal his sexually ambiguous body. His nudity and hermaphroditism are only illusions, however. In the London and New York productions, the singer who played Akhenaten, Christopher Robson, wore an elaborate body-suit with certain attachments that took three hours to get into. It created a very convincing illusion

at the interval people could be overheard wondering which bits were false, Akhenaten's breasts or penis.²⁷

Akhenaten's sexual ambivalence was accentuated by having his part sung by a counter-tenor. The fluting voice, neither male nor female, is perfect for Glass's transgendered Akhenaten. As well as Akhenaten, Christopher Robson has sung other roles whose confused sexuality is threatening and destructive, such as an incestuous lesbian murderess in a version of Jean Genet's play The Maids.

Like Jarman, those who stage Glass's opera exploit the setting in an Orientalist space to augment the sexuality. In A/chnaten the winnowers and brickmakers summoned up one aspect of eternal, unchanging Egypt; the other, (homo)erotie side of Orientalism was represented by six shaven-headed non-singing wrestlers, naked cxccpt for white sumo-style loincloths, who writhed about in slow-motion clinches for the entire production. At the end of the opera they were a convenient dramatic deviec, surrounding Akhenaten and bringing him down after his self-blinding. The wrestlers were included to focus the self- absorbed royal characters in a real human drama, but to the many gay opera- goers their shaven heads and built-up bodies suggested something rather different

they looked like 1980s stereotypes of gay men. This received a curious real-life confirmation after the performance, when you walked out of the English National Opera, down Saint Martin's Lane, and past one of London's most popular gay bars, the Brief Encounter. Life imitated art: the stage wrestlers' twins were standing around on the pavement with their drinks, and for a moment two different gay worlds seemed to merge.²⁸