Akhnaten Clarification

My review of Long Beach Opera's excellent Akhnaten production didn't get into the question of when the West Coast premier of the opera took place, but my earlier blog posting noted that the first had been by tiny Oakland Opera Theater (OOT) in 2004. That's because Tim Mangan's Opera News review stuck in my head:

• Tim:  "More than twenty-five years after its premiere, Philip Glass's Akhnaten finally made its way to the West Coast in a production by Long Beach Opera that was clever, low-budget and satisfying (seen Mar. 19)."
• Brian at Out West Arts got it right:  "But like it or not, Glass’ Akhnaten is indeed very much an opera and nearly a quarter of a century after its debut, it arrived on the West Coast for the first time in a complete form."
• So did Mark Swed: "But none of that could lessen the significance of the first full-scale production in Southern California of a major opera by America’s best-known and most influential opera composer, erasing a shocking cultural omission."

The press release for LBO's  Akhnaten took appropriate credit for this production as the first West Coast production that was fully staged and used Glass's original orchestration.