When the L.A. Opera debuted their newest production, Akhanten, last night, not everybody was ready to give it a standing ovation. Protesters from a group called Black History Matters gathered outside the performance to call attention to a problem they have with the casting of Anthony Roth Costanzo in the opera’s title role. In real life, Akhnaten was the Egyptian pharaoh married to the famous queen Nefertiti—and he probably didn’t look quite like the white actor hired to play his part.
“Ethnicity was not a factor in our decision,” the L.A. Opera asserted in their response statement, as Playbill reports. Instead, they insist, Costanzo was selected because the requirements of the lead in Phillip Glass’ new opera are simply both unusual and challenging and Costanzo, who just played the same role for a production with the English National Opera, was uniquely qualified to reprise the role.
Beyond Costanzo, several performers of color are in the production, including the African-American mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges in the co-starring role of Nefertiti, but that wasn’t enough to impress protest organizers.
Does this mean that Los Angeles has an #OperaSoWhite problem on our hands?
In general, opera has not always been at the forefront of representations of diversity. It wasn’t until just last year that the Metropolitan Opera in New York decided it might be time to do away with blackface makeup.
Of permanent company members listed on the L.A. Opera website, only three present as non-white. However, after Akhanten, their very next production will be a staging of Wonderful Town, in which the central pair of sisters are played by one white actress and one African-American one. After that, they’ll stage Mozart’s Abduction from Seraglio with a Korean-American actress co-starring alongside a Spanish-born, Puerto Rican-reared lead. All of those decisions actually make L.A. Opera pretty progressive on diversity.
Representation in all performing arts is a hot-button issue—and the solutions are a complicated mix of everything from would-be young artists’ access to training to what shows sell better than others. While casting a white man to play an African king might rightly feel offensive, or at the very least awkward, it’s also fair to say that there are people within the opera community, especially so here in L.A., trying to move toward more diverse productions.
Want more? Sign up here to stay in the know.