When I moved out of Nappanee and started my life on the road, my former roommate Scott moved out to Long Beach, CA. Since Long Beach was a fairly quick trip on the Metro Blue Line south from our hotel in downtown LA, I made the trip down on a couple of occasions. First time was to see an opera at the Long Beach Opera. This was not one of the activities that I had planned to do, but when I saw an ad for Philip Glass's Akhnaten at Long Beach Opera I added it to the list.
Philip Glass is not everyone's cup of tea. His music is classified as minimalist, or in other words very repetitive. I enjoy his music though, and when I heard some clips from Akhnaten I was hooked. The production itself turned out to be a very mixed bag. The plot of the opera is based on the life of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhnaten and is sung in original languages like Ancient Egyptian and Biblical Hebrew. Well this production did not have a drop of Egyptian anything in it. Instead the sets were very simple and plain, and mostly relied on projections that looked like bad computer screen savers from the mid 1990s. But for me it was all about the music, and getting to hear it performed live was a treat.
Seeing Akhnaten only confirmed what a fool I was in college. I was so intent on being a Broadway snob that I totally dismissed opera. Now looking back and realizing that IU has one of the best opera programs in the country and that I could have seen so many great productions of operas there I am kicking myself. In fact IU is doing a production of Akhnaten this next year. If only...
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