Chicago Opera Theatre will present Philip Glass' opera, Akhnaten, directed by MacArthur "Genius" Grant winner, Mary Zimmerman. Akhnaten will be presented July 19, 21, 23 and 29, 2000 -- in a co- production with Boston's Lyric Opera.

Glass has been a long-time theatre composer, beginning when he was one of the original members of Mabou Mines in the Sixties. He began to attract the attention of the classical musical and opera world with his landmark 1976 collaboration with theatre director Robert Wilson, Einstein on the Beach and became one of the major composers in music's minimalist genre.

Zimmerman, whose works are typically built from the ground up through improvisation, has staged The Remembrance of Things Proust, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, S/M, Arabian Nights and Mirrors of the Invisible World. Her work is characterized by stylized movement and athletic choreography. Zimmerman is a member of Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre and teaches at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts at Northwestern University

Tickets for Akhnaten are $25 - $55, call (773) 292-7578.

-- By Sean McGrath