OPERA
Costanzo’s Enigmatic Pharaoh
Countertenor probes gender fl uidity in a Met premiere
Anthony Roth Costanzo at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where he performed an excerpted half-hour preview of “Akhnaten” earlier this month.
BY CHRISTOPHER MURRAY
There’s an amazing fourminute
video where the
countertenor Anthony
Roth Costanzo talks to
sixth graders at the TAPCo Middle
School in the Bronx about how feelings
are communicated through
music ( here or below). It’s a fun
and energetic conversation, and
then Costanzo opens his mouth to
sing the aria “Pena Tiranna” from
Handel’s “magic” opera “Amadigi di
Gaula.” A room full of 11-year-old
jaws drop.
Countertenors like Costanzo,
37, sing in the register usually associated
with women’s voices. It’s
impossible in our still tightly gendered
world not to have any deviations
from the most traditional
presentations of male and female
behavior shake things up. Costanzo,
who has been performing professionally
since he was 11 himself,
has built an international career
as a very in-demand countertenor
singing operas from the Baroque
repertoire originally composed for
castrati — male singers who were
castrated before puberty.
About reactions to his vocal style
and range, Costanzo has said, “A
child’s initial response to it is to
laugh at it and I say bring it on,
laugh at it. Look at me as effeminate
or gay or whatever you want
to do because, in those 30 seconds
that you’re that engaged with me,
that you’re listening, that you’re
laughing, I can do something beautiful
enough to bring you along,
and then you stick around.”
Costanzo, who identifi es as gay,
has taken pains to address expectations
about male voices throughout
his education and career. In a
short video from 2017 for the website
Living the Classical Life ( here
or below), Costanzo said, “There’s
a built-in novelty factor that goes
with being a countertenor. Is it
effeminate to sing as a countertenor?
Like anything, the more
comfortable you are with it, the
more comfortable other people are.
I think we’re normalizing a lot of
that stuff theoretically and hopefully,
but still the shock value in
any context of hearing a man sing
not only like a woman, but also in
a way that’s very penetrating, very
operatic, that fi lls a room, I think
it’s very exciting to people.”
That sense of excitement reaches
a fever pitch this month and
next when Costanzo sings the title
CHRISTOPHER MURRAY
role in the long-awaited Metropolitan
Opera premiere of minimalist
composer Philip Glass’ polyphonic
“Akhnaten” from 1984. This production,
originally co-produced by
the English National Opera and LA
Opera in 2016, had an excerpted
half-hour preview at the Brooklyn
Museum of Art’s monthly First Saturdays
several weeks ago. Costanzo’s
powerful voice fi lled the majestic
third fl oor Beaux Art court
and echoed through its rounded
archways and up 60 feet to bounce
off the skylight. When he began to
sing, hundreds of visitors, many
families and kids, did the jawdropping
thing en masse.
Fred Plotkin, author of “Opera
101” and lead opera writer for
WQXR, told me, “Anthony Roth
Costanzo has all the assets required
of a successful contemporary
opera singer: a beautiful,
distinctive voice that he uses expressively;
intellectual curiosity
and a willingness to explore complex
ideas and emotions; a naturally
charismatic stage presence
with no self-consciousness; and
being an artist who respects and
inspires his colleagues. All of this
combines to make him irresistible
to listen to and watch.
Costanzo’s discipline and drive,
his upbeat personality and entrepreneurial
spirit have helped him
forge a unique place in the classical
music world and beyond it. Yes,
he’s sung the classics of the Baroque
repertoire at the major opera
houses and with the great orchestras,
but he’s been tireless in expanding
his horizons well beyond
opera. His eclectic debut album for
Decca Gold, “ARC Glass/ Handel,”
was nominated for a Grammy this
year and he’s known for collaborations
with a hugely diverse set of
artists from classical composers
Nico Muhly and Matthew Aucoin
to New York City Ballet choreographer
Justin Peck, actress Tilda
Swinton, fashion designer Raf Simons,
and a range of fi lmmakers
and artists as part of his hour-long
operatic multimedia installation
“Glass Handel” last year.
As for the Met premiere of “Akhnaten,”
Costanzo told Gay City
News this month that he has always
admired Glass’ music and
“for him to have written a role for
a countertenor about such a fascinating
character felt like the perfect
fi t.”
The historical Akhnaten (generally
spelled Akhenaten outside
of Glass’ work), originally Amenhotep
IV of the late 18th Dynasty,
ruled as pharaoh for 17 years circa
1352 to 1335 BC and during that
time turned his people’s culture
completely on its head. He moved
the capital city south from Thebes
to what is now the archeological
site Amarna. He was also perhaps
the fi rst monotheist by dint
of establishing a cult of one god,
based on the Aten, representing
the disk of the sun, an aspect of
the god Ra’s being. These changes
would be completely undone after
his death, with Egyptian culture
reverting back to polytheism, Amarna
abandoned and buried under
sand, Akhnaten’s name stricken
from the lists of kings, and many
images of the pharaoh hidden, destroyed,
or defi led.
The images we do have of Akh-
➤ COSTANZO, continued on p.27
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