Philip Glass' "Akhnaten" is a famous opera by a popular composer. There is a recording on Sony Classical, and two scholarly books have been devoted to the work. Nevertheless, no one in the world has seen a production of "Akhnaten" in 11 years -- it's been that long since the final performance of the original production in Stuttgart.

The Boston Lyric Opera's production of "Akhnaten" is the third staging in the work's history. The first was Achim Freyer's production in Stuttgart; the second, seen in Houston, London, and at the New York City Opera, was by David Freeman.Glass plans to see a performance later in the run; he's touring Australia with his "Dracula" music. Before heading for the antipodes, he came to the phone to talk about "Akhnaten" (1984), the third work in his trilogy of "portrait operas" devoted to figures and issues that changed the world -- Einstein ("Einstein on the Beach," 1976, "science, technology and ecology") and M. K. Gandhi ("Satyagraha," 1980, "politics: violence and non-violence"). The subject of "Akhnaten" is not only the Egyptian ruler from the 14th century B.C. but also "religion: orthodoxy and reaction." Collectively the three works created a major redefinition of opera and marked important evolutionary steps in Glass's style; the works aroused interest, praise, condemnation, and controversy. What is unquestionable is that they also brought a whole new generation into the opera house for the first time.

Glass says the idea of creating a trilogy was not his at all. "The conductor Dennis Russell Davies was behind that. In those days, he was moving around among opera houses. We had done 'Satyagraha' in Rotterdam, and then he became music director in Stuttgart. They expected him to bring a new work with him, and he asked me to think about one. I came up with the idea of Akhnaten after stumbling across Immanuel Velikovsky's book 'Oedipus and Akhnaton.' Finally in 1989, all three operas were done together. Then, as so often happens in Europe, the whole opera house administration changed, and the new people decided they were not going to do the trilogy anymore, even though it had been such a great success with the public. The three operas never came together again."