All tagged Karen Kamensek
Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, written in 1983, is an opera in three Acts based on the life and religious convictions of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Akhnaten. The opera was commissioned and premiered in Stuttgart Germany and the American premiere was directed a year later in Houston by the Australian Opera Director, David Freeman. The English premiere was staged in 1985 by ENO, who now stage its new 2016 production in partnership with the LA Opera. The Egyptian and Hebrew texts are all taken from original sources, as indeed is the juggling whose source had been discovered as graffiti on the wall in an Egyptian tomb.
This incredible opera written by Philip Glass had its world premiere in 1980 in Rotterdam and its UK premiere in Bath in 1997. Its main commissioning in the UK was an incredible production at the English National Opera in 2007, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Opera New York, with the Director Phelim McDermott and his Improbable team in charge.
This was the first complete live performance of the work, Passages, composed in 1990 by Shankar/Glass. It was a particularly emotional performance as the lead sitar player was Shankar’s daughter, Anoushka. Shankar led a fairly complicated personal life, but Anoushka, who was born in 1981, was his last child and became an excellent sitar player of star quality in her own right.
