Anthony Roth Costanzo

Image © Ashmolean Museum / Emily Jarrett - ARC in the Ashmolean museum beside a statue of Akhnaten

In 2022 Oxford will celebrate the centenary of the controversial discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun with a free exhibition of the Griffith Institute's archive in the Bodleian Treasury gallery. For the accompanying public engagement program, international opera star Anthony Roth Costanzo, who has championed opera outreach to diverse communities in innovative ways, will visit Oxford in late October 2022. He is starring in Philip Glass' opera based on the life of Tutankhamun's father, Akhnaten, and has already worked on the interpretation of this figure with Oxford Egyptology. The events will showcase the interpretation of ancient historical records as a source for living performative art, and performance as a means of bringing a historical archive to life, breaking through institutional walls. During his visit Anthony will give a public performance of the Hymn to the Aten, hold a public seminar about the way in which historical documents can shape the interpretation of a character in a modern work, teach a masterclass for young singers of the Music Faculty, and reach out to schoolchildren to communicate his enthusiasm for the art form and for Oxford's historical archives.

Principal Investigators:

Professor Richard Bruce Parkinson

Dr Daniela Rosenow

Project Officer

Faculty of Oriental Studies