There were fail-safes: Director Phelim McDermott’s spectacular, phantasmagoric, exquisite production, conductor Karen Kamensek’s mastery of the difficult score, the glorious, finely trained and tuned orchestra, Donald Palumbo’s chorus and a quite miraculous cast had been gathered to offer a mesmerizing, deep, and vastly entertaining contemporary masterpiece. Reports from afar had been glowing, the production having been seen in London and Los Angeles, but New York audiences are sui generis: at once traditional and widely broadminded, who know whether or not Glass’s lengthy, almost libretto-less opera about a forgotten Egyptian Pharaoh would capture the Met audiences. Despite the enormous amount of money, time, talent, and thought that went into it, it was expected to be a success d’estime rather than a box office smash.
It has been just three years since Philip Glass’s Akhnaten took the Met Opera by storm.
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