And so how do we control them? And the only answer is with imagery, really with the mind.

'What's amazing about singing is that the muscles involved in it are involuntary. Using mental imagery to activate his vocal muscles And so you see this trajectory of Aknhaten's transformation of thought and also body.'

It's not graphic in any way, but it is rather very beautiful. I wear these gauzy Egyptian linen pleated robes and underneath them the costume designer Kevin Pollard and the director Phelim McDermott have chosen this slip that has printed a woman's body, a kind of painted woman's body, but from far away - and even from 10 feet away - it looks like breasts and women's genitals. So you see this very male figure emerge and then, over the course of the opera, I kind of transform into someone with these more feminine features.

And it goes on for quite a while in slow motion - six minutes. 'I enter completely stark naked - probably the first full-frontal male nudity at the Met. Deceptive Cadence Anthony Roth Costanzo: A Countertenor For The 21st Century

Akhnaten met opera