Star of Met Opera Akhnaten Is Offered Egyptology Fellowship at Oxford

The first time Richard Bruce Parkinson saw an opera, he was not impressed. The tale of Pharaoh Tutankhamun's father and his doomed quest to change Egypt's belief system from polytheism to monotheism struck him as romantic.

Thirty years and one production later, Parkinson, a professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford and a former curator at the British Museum, is now a superfan. Anthony Costanzo, the opera's star, is a visiting fellow at Oxford's Research Centre in the Humanities.

The current steampunk-inflected version of Akhnaten, from director Phelim McDermott with sets by Tom Pye and costumes by Kevin Pollard, has been running since 2016 It will be back at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on May 19 after a season hiatus, returning with a win for best opera recording.

Costanzo was told that he was not a real pharaoh.

It is not all that ridiculous. Costanzo is a countertenor who sings in a woman's traditional register and has starred in the current production at the London Coliseum. He looks like the pharaoh. If you look at photographs of Anthony during performances and compare them to a bust of Akhnaten in the Berlin museum, it's a very good likeness, says Parkinson.

Parkinson says that Costanzo was given the fellowship because of his efforts to change historical biases. Think of The Mummy. Think of Indiana Jones. Parkinson says that they are really offensive and that the pharaoh is a thinker and human being.

The production's aesthetic may be soft-edged steampunk with a splash of modernity. It emphasizes religious rebellion and gender fluidity. There are no hieroglyphs or palm trees in the sets. Parkinson says that a troupe of jugglers provides the visual drama that is historically accurate. As has been said, juggling is an art practiced by the ancient Egyptians.

Costanzo's costumes for the opera are naked in the first six minutes, a departure from the usual underwear-in-front-of-an-audience nightmare. The rest of the time, Costanzo and the cast are wearing gauzy robes and headdresses, a nod to the period of Western culture when ancient Egypt was fetishized. Parkinson, a specialist in ancient Egyptian poetry, was left in raptures by the second-act climax, in which Costanzo sings an aria based on an ancient poem and then ascends a staircase to worship a massive glowing orb. He says it was fresh and modern and a serious work of art.

Audiences agree. The show opened in London and traveled to Los Angeles. When it went to New York, the Metropolitan Opera was almost always full. He says that by bringing attention to this role, they can re-create the ancient experience, but they are the same vision of giving a bit of life back to the past.