6 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Wednesday13 November 2019

ARTS

From left,

J’Nai Bridges,

Anthony Roth

Costanzo and

Disella

Larusdottir in

‘Akhnaten’

Karen Almond

John Rockwell

Philip Glass’s 1984 operaAkhnatencame

towards the end of his most brilliant

period, culminating inEinstein on the

Beach, the operaSatyagrahaand the film

scoreKoyaanisqatsi. Since then, for the

past 35 years, Glass has poured out an

astonishing amount of music. Much of it

has seemed desultory nd formulaic. Ita

will take a longperiod for posterity to

weedtheoccasionaljewelsfromthepre-

vailingdross,thoughjewelsthereare.

In the meantime,Akhnatenremains a

masterpiece. Phelim McDermott’s bril-

liantproductionhasfinallyarrivedatits

third co-commissioner, the Metropoli-

tanOpera,afterrunsatEnglishNational

Opera,whereitfirstsawlifein2016,and

the Los Angeles Opera. It was wildly

applaudedhere,anddeservedlyso.

Akhnatenis the third of what Glass

now calls his “portrait operas”, the first

being inspired by Einstein and the sec-

ond by Gandhi. Akhenaten appealed for

hispioneeringattempttoimposemono-

theism,thoughtheoldordersoughtvio-

lently to suppress his memory. He was a

strange yet compelling figure, and Glass

capturesallofhisexoticallure.

The libretto (a collaboration by the

Egyptologist Shalom Goldman, the

designers Robert Israel and Richard

Riddell, and Jerome Robbins) follows

EinsteinandSatyagrahain presenting a

sequence of meditative images. As with

the Sanskrit ofSatyagraha,Akhnatenis

sung largely in distant languages, left

untranslated on the Met’s seatback

titles. We hear Akkadian, ancient Egyp-

tian and Hebrew, andEnglish only in

Akhnaten’s soulful “Hymn to the Sun”

and the spoken narration. The orches-

tration is also unusual: there are no vio-

lins ,creatingadarkandmournfulaura.

McDermott’s Glass productions can

be faulted for trying to distract from the

music with fancy stage business — here

with omnipresent juggling. But the jug-

gling — brilliantly realised by Sean

Gandini and his troupe — echoes the lin-

earity of Glass’s music and the flying

white balls the various orbs of the sun.

The largest orb, during “Akhnaten’s

Hymn”, represents the apex of Bruno

Poet’s wonderful lighting, white to yel-

low to orange to red against a glowing

red background. Tom Pye’s sets and

Kevin Pollard’s costumes form a riot of

periods. The entire visual effect is daz-

zling even if the principals sometimes

seemfrozenintozombieslowmotion

Mostoftheperformersareveteransof

London and Los Angeles. Karen

Kamensek conducts surely and

Anthony Roth Costanzo repeats his

eerie, evocative countertenor singing in

the title role. Zachary James is a stento-

rian, theatrically stylised narrator, with

J’Nai Bridges as Akhnaten’s wife Nefer-

titi and Disella Larusdottir as Queen

Tye, his mother; they sing lovely duets

andtriostogether.

ToDecember7,metopera.org

Glass’s pharaoh retains his allure

O P E R A

Akhnaten

Metropolitan Opera, New York

aaaae

Max McGuinness

InAugust1991,aseven-year-oldboy,the

son of Guyanese immigrants, was killed

inatrafficaccidentinvolvingthemotor-

cade of a prominent rabbi in Crown

Heights, Brooklyn. His death triggered

several days of racially charged rioting,

during which a young Australian

Hasidicscholarwasfatallystabbed.

Less than a year later, Anna Deavere

Smith debuted this one-person verba-

tim play, composed of around 30 brief

monologues adapted from interviews

she conducted with Crown Heights resi-

dents and individuals caught up in the

riotaswellasvariouscommentators.

Unlike other pieces of documentary

theatre, such as David Hare’s works,

Fires in the Mirror oesn’t attempt tod

offer a comprehensive account of what

happened. Instead, Smith draws us into

whatoneofherintervieweesdubsa“cir-

cle of confusion”, where even basic fac-

tualclarityappearselusiveamidthedis-

tortions of media coverage and a

cacophony of political bickering. That

metaphor emerges early on in a seem-

ingly unrelated explanation of telescope

design, which evokes Smith own ellipti-

calapproachtohersubject.

The first half of this 110-minute play

also features reflections on racial iden-

tityfromfiguressuchastheatredirector

GeorgeC.Wolfe,politicalactivistAngela

Davis and an anonymous Brooklyn

schoolgirl. The focus then shifts to the

riotanditsaftermath,asexperiencedby

familymembersofthevictims,ananon-

ymous rioter and controversial pastor

AlSharptonamongothers.

Michael Benjamin Washington per-

formsthese monologues with virtuosic

dexterity,seamlessly shifting between

more than 20 characters whose man-

nerisms and speech patterns seem viv-

idly authentic in his portrayal. He also

finds surprising moments of comedy in

this dismal story, particularly when

deliveringSharpton’ssaltierremarks.

Washington’s ventriloquising talents

are well served by Saheem Ali’s

stripped-down staging, where the actor

uses a handful of props and some deft

costume tweaks to create subtle shifts of

mood and emphasis in a style reminis-

centofBritishdirectorPeterBrook.

Smith’s play can be heavy going at

times. But her consistent detachment

and refusal to pass judgment makeFires

into a radical exercise in theatrical

empathy that illuminates a salient epi-

sodeinrecentNewYorkhistory.

ToDecember15,signaturetheatre.org

T H E AT R E

Fires in the Mirror

Pershing Square Signature Center, New York

aaaae

Leonardo’s work is surrounded by a digital ‘altarpiece’ —Justin Sutcliffe

paraphernalia such as easels, paints and

crusty palettes alongside modern scien-

tific equipment. The centre of attention

is a large easel on which an animated

projection looping over several minutes

shows how Leonardo built up his paint-

ing layer by layer to achieve his innova-

tive effects. A voiceover by two of the

gallery’sconservatorsexploresthehigh-

tech analysis that revealed the secrets

hiddenbeneaththesurface.

Like many artists, Leonardo some-

times altered his compositions in the

course of a commission, either for aes-

thetic reasons or after discussions with

those paying the bill. In 2005, an

entirely different composition was dis-

covered lying beneath “The Virgin of

the Rocks”, and this year scientists

using the latest macro X-ray fluores-

cence (XRF) technology revealed the

zinc pencil lines of an earlier design for

the angel and baby Christ. Analysis of

the paint layers also showed how the

artisthadparedbacktheshoulderofthe

Virgin’s cape, painting background

brownoverthebluefoldsofthecape.

Leonardo’s intense interest in the sci-

ence of optics is the subject of another

room. Included in the glorious eclecti-

cism of his notebooks are experiments

and diagrams on how the position and

intensity of light created different

effects; the anatomy and function of the

eye; and the use of perspective and col-

our tones to create the impression of

depth. In this room, viewers can use

levers and dials to alter the position of

light on objects, including a model

posedinthemanneroftheVirgin.

As fun as this is, the lack of any

explanatory text — bar a couple of terse

sentences at the room’s entrance —

leaves viewers helpless to understand

the connections between the exhibits

and Leonardo’s scientific thinking or

the painting that awaits them at the

culmination of the show. A spotlight

swings like a pendulum against a per-

fectly black wall, each pass of the beam

illuminating a different “object” hang-

ing from the surface. Why is it here?

What does it have to do with Leonardo?

Since no explanation is offered, we can

onlyguess.

In the final room, the show’s

O

ne of the skills of the

curator is knowing how

much explanation, if any,

should accompany the

objects or artworks placed

in front of the viewer. Ask people to

plough through too much textual infor-

mation and you risk losing their atten-

tion or straying into academia. Say too

little and rudderless visitors can come

away feeling uninformed or, worse,

short-changed.

A show which dedicates five large gal-

lery rooms to celebrating a single work

of art — Leonardo da Vinci’s master-

piece “The Virgin of the Rocks” — was

always likely to fall into the former trap.

In fact, it leaves itself far more vulnera-

bletothelattercriticism.

This stunning painting, one of the

best known works in the National Gal-

lery collection, has been given a three-

month exhibition — or “immersive

experience” in the gallery’s on-trend

phrase—tomarkthe500thanniversary

ofLeonardo’sdeathin1519.

Commissioned to adorn a chapel in

the church of San Francesco Grande in

Milan, the large-scale painting was

acknowledged on its completion as a

triumph, a revolutionary work that

brought together many of the Italian

master’s advances and preoccupations

in science, technique and artistry

over the 25 years he took to paint it

(in two versions, the other of which is in

theLouvre).

It shows the Virgin Mary, draped in

lustrous blue cloth with her face radiant

under a single overhead source of light.

Beside her are the infant St John the

Baptist, a kneeling angel and Christ as a

plump and healthy baby. Set in a ver-

dant, primordial scene, with rocky out-

crops fading into the distance (Leon-

ardo counted geology among his inter-

ests) and flowers tumbling over

assorted greenery, this graceful quartet

communicate a sense of harmony to

one another as well as to the viewer.

Acquired by the National Gallery in

1880, the painting is now deemed too

fragile to be loaned elsewhere. And so,

with the Louvre and the Royal Collec-

tion staging blockbuster Leonardo exhi-

bitions that were years in the planning,

the National Gallery opted for the radi-

cal approach of focusing on this single

work and marshalling interactive and

visual aids as well as lighting and sound

techniquestoexploreit.

As partners in its departure from gal-

lery tradition, the curators brought in

the theatrical company 59 Productions,

with a CV that includes the National

Theatre’sWar Horseand a record-

breakingDavidBowieshowattheVicto-

riaandAlbertMuseum.

Oneroom—themostsuccessfulofthe

show — presents an artist’s studio-cum-

conservation laboratory, filled with

What lies behind a Leonardo masterpiece?

denouement finds Leonardo’s work sur-

rounded by an imagined version of the

highly decorated and sculpted altar-

piece that would originally have housed

itinthechapelofSanFrancescoGrande.

Little is known about what this looked

like, so the curators used other work by

the sculptor Giacomo Del Maino to

come up with a well-researched guess,

projected as a digital animation around

Leonardo’s painting. It is a clever idea,

but it comes with the downside that the

viewer’s attention is constantly switch-

ing between the ever-changing imagery

of the altarpiece and quiet contempla-

tion of what was surely intended as the

staroftheshow—thepaintingitself.

The flaws in a show that contains

some bold ideas are frustrating. The

communicationsgapisparticularlytan-

talising, not least because the gallery

has already done the work of explaining

the painting’s meaning and significance

in admirably clear prose on an accom-

panying website. For an institution

sometimesaccusedofconservatism,the

gallery’s willingness to experiment with

new ways of engaging people should be

applauded. But visitors should not be

surprised to find their thirst for knowl-

edgeunquenched.

‘Leonardo:ExperienceaMasterpiece’

toJanuary12,nationalgallery.org.uk

‘The Virgin of the Rocks’ is the

subject of a new immersive

show at London’s National

Gallery. By James Pickford

An animated projection

shows how Leonardo

built up his painting layer

by layer to achieve his

innovative effects

The show dedicates five rooms to ‘The Virgin of the Rocks’, including this studio-cum-laboratory —Justin Sutcliffe.