Akhnaten is an opera in three acts by American minimalist composer Philip Glass (see Glass, Philip ). Minimalist music features repeated short patterns of music with complex rhythmic variations but simple harmonies. Akhnaten was based on the life of the pharaoh Akhnaten, also spelled Akhenaten, who ruled ancient Egypt from about 1353 to 1336 B.C. The opera was completed in July 1983. It received its first performance in Stuttgart, Germany, on March 24, 1984. Glass composed the opera to a libretto (text) on which he collaborated with writers Shalom Goldman and Richard Riddell and the stage designer Robert Israel.
Akhnaten is the last and best known of three works that Glass called “portrait operas.” The others were Einstein on the Beach (1975), concerning the life of the German-born American scientist Albert Einstein, and Satyagraha (1980), about Indian politician Mohandas K. Gandhi. Like the other two, Akhnaten has no definite story line but instead portrays episodes from the life of its central character. Akhnaten sought to introduce a revolutionary new religion into Egypt by replacing the traditional pantheon (group) of gods, which included Amun, Horus, and Seth, with a single deity, Aten, the source of all creation. Akhnaten also moved Egypt’s capital from Thebes to the newly built city of Akhetaten. The palace archives discovered there by modern archaeologists formed the basis for the libretto of Glass’s opera. Akhnaten charts the course of this pharaoh’s reign from the moment he succeeded his father Amenhotep III until his overthrow as a heretic by the priests of the old gods. The main characters in the opera are Akhnaten; Nefertiti, his wife; and Queen Tye, his mother.
