TYSONS CORNER, VA, December 7, 2011 – The New York Metropolitan Opera will reprise its recent theatrical broadcast of Philip Glass’ epic intellectual opera Satyagraha this evening at select local movie theaters. An unusual retelling of Mohandas (Mahatma) Ghandi’s spiritual and political awakening during his lengthy stay in South Africa, the opera stars Richard Croft, Rachelle Durkin, Kim Josephson, and Alfred Walker.
Originally simulcast live in HD on November 19, this recorded broadcast provides area opera lovers with a second opportunity to catch one of the more visually lavish operatic productions in recent memory.
Prior to attending last month’s broadcast of the opera, this reviewer had never had the opportunity to catch a Met simulcast due to a busy schedule of local opera, symphony, and theatrical reviewing chores. Roughly two years ago, we did manage to take in a transcontinental simulcast of a well-sung European production of Das Rheingold. Alas, due to the quality of the satellite link, and perhaps a few dancing sunspots thrown in, the downlink to a Herndon, Virginia theater occasionally flickered, died, or went out of synch.
Richard Croft as Gandhi in Met's production of Philip Glass' 'Satyagraha.' (Photo credits: Ken Howard/NY Metropolitan Opera.)
Although in some ways, comparing these two simulcasts is like comparing apples to oranges, the Met’s simulcast of Satyagraha proved superior to the European effort, not only due to superbly functioning network technology which never skipped a beat. This big budget production also boasted superb singing and perhaps the most imaginative setting of any opera that we’ve yet seen.
And this is key to the very real success of the Met’s effort in putting on such a potentially bizarre and confusing opera. Glass’ vision for the work is no less than an imagined holy trinity of music, pantomime, and visual signals meant to convey a noumenal, spiritual awakening. The chorus and soloists pantomime key scenes grounded in Ghandi’s social and spiritual awakening, as he evolves from a proper, straight-laced, brilliant, British-educated attorney into the publisher of an activist, opposition newsletter for South Africa’s Hindu—aka, “colored”—apartheid-created cast.
It was this final evolution that transformed him into the political-spiritual leader he was fated to become and which finally drove him back to his native India and into the history books as the first modern exemplar of revolutionary political nonviolence.
But this is where the Glass opera can get a little weird for fans of traditional opera. As we’ve indicated, the historical pageant of events during Ghandi’s South African sojourn is pantomimed. The sung dialogue, however, is, in a literal sense, divorced from the action. As the singers act out this phase of Ghandi’s life, both soloists and chorus are actually singing passages from the Bhagavad Gita, the famous Hindu text that’s not only a part of the Mahabharata, a many-centuries old Hindu epic, but also a key Hindu spiritual text, somewhat similar to one of the Christian biblical testaments.
The idea here is to narrate the pantomimed actions on stage with key testament verses that either parallel the action or enlighten the meaning of the action, which now separates the continuum into two different but simultaneous planes.
Making things even more interesting, the singers deliver the verses of the Bhagavad Gita in the original Sanskrit, a tough tongue to learn for an opera no matter what the singer’s native language. And, making things more difficult for the singers (and the instrumentalists as well) is the droning, trance-like repetitiousness of each sung section, part and parcel of the Glass approach to music, which we’ll return to in a moment.
Adding a third parallel plane, various stage gimmickry, including an entire cast of gigantic, morphing puppets, reinforces the action on the ground yet again, drawing on ancient epic battles between demons and gods, heroes and villains, and indeed, between good and evil.
These three planes, in turn, are reinforced by imagery of the historical past, present, and future—time-space continuums echoed by the literary, spiritual, and political inspirations for each of the opera’s three acts. Inset windows open at the rear of the stage at the outset of each act, revealing each of the figures—two of whom greatly influenced Ghandi—who serve as the inspiration for each act.
Cast and giant puppets in Met's 'Satyagraha.'
Act I is presided over by Russian novelist and later spiritual thinker Leo Tolstoy. A figure from Ghandi’s past, he famously experienced his own spiritual awakening, which led to his ideas on social reform, pacifism, and, ultimately, non-violent resistance—a key element in Ghandi’s own awakening and political thinking.
Act II—representing Ghandi’s present—unfolds under the watchful eye of Rabindranath Tagore. Not well known in the West, Tagore, sometimes known as “Gurudev,” was a multitalented author and thinker who became the first non-European winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913). An eccentric personality, he also was known for his forward looking social views and came to be regarded by many—and no doubt by Ghandi—as a prophet and an inspiration.
The concluding Act III belongs to the future, specifically Dr. Martin Luther King, who appears in the stage rear window to preside over the opera’s finale. The symbolism here is quite clear. King is Ghandi’s contemporary successor, a missionary figure who, perhaps a bit like the New Testament St. Paul, spreads the Indian master’s nonviolent teachings to distant lands abroad.
If you’ve already guessed that Satyagraha is not your normal opera, congratulations. But we’re not done yet. In addition to the spiritual and intellectual content of the opera, listeners also have to deal with Philip Glass’ definition of music, and this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
This reviewer admits right up front that he’s never exactly been a fan of Philip Glass’ music. Fifty years from now, we’d predict, Glass will be viewed as a brilliant but transitional figure in the world of serious music.
Throughout much of the 20th century, the bulk of classical music was captured in the throes of academic serialism (atonalism) that proved to be so uniformly ugly, unending, and unbearable as to drive generations of audiences out of the concert hall whenever any modern work was scheduled on a program.
Based—as is the case even today in humanities curricula—on this “theory” or that one, serialism divorced much of classical music from more user-friendly criteria such as tunefulness, listenability, and accessibility. Arguably, the academics’ stringent adherence to atonal theory—to the point where many listenable 20th century composers were systematically ignored or rarely programmed—this nonsense was a major force in the current, continuing marginalization of classical music in modern Western society and particularly in the U.S.
Not surprisingly, Glass started composing in the serialist mode. After all, it had become the established way of establishing a career. But to his credit, Glass eventually realized that serialism had the limited ability to evolve and also could never satisfy an audience. So he invented, in a sense, a way back to tradition, a methodology that’s been dubbed “minimalism.” Glass, in fact, returned almost completely to the notion of traditional tonality. But his music only provided tonality in small, bite-sized, endlessly repetitive chunks.
In Glass’ minimalist compositions—of which Satyagraha is one—the composer introduces small musical moments consisting of evolving, short motifs. No a b a structures here. No first theme, second theme, development, coda. No sonata form. Just motifs that repeat endlessly yet morph over time. Complexity in Glass is not traditional development but in the altering of tempo, speed, and figure. A simple motif becomes more complicated, sometimes increasing in speed, and also drifting and changing by the addition or subtraction of musical choirs.
For this reason, Glass actually detests the use of the term “minimalism” to describe his music, as his compositions do indeed develop, evolve, and change, but on his own terms, not those of a Beethoven or even a Mahler. Candidly, his music still sounds minimalist to us. It’s tentative, not daring. And yet, in a way, it mirrors the bulk of hard rock music in the popular environment which itself is built upon a limited set of chords and one, perhaps two driving rhythms per song. So you have to give Glass at least some credit. He’s at least put his listeners back on the train of musical traditions, even if they don’t know their ultimate destination.
But here’s the challenge. To the average classical music fan, which includes this reviewer, Glass can be okay in small chunks. Longer chunks can get pretty boring. The most successful classical composition involving endless repetition still remains Maurice Ravel’s phenomenally repetitive Bolero. And, although this may seem a leap, Ravel’s signature popular composition in many ways parallels how Satyagraha works, particularly in the Met’s brilliant concept.
Ravel gets away with his own minimalist idea by varying figures, volume, instrumental combos. He does it better than Glass in his Bolero. But Glass’ opera has the added benefit of actor/singers and scenic effects. So, as Glass’ minimalist motifs drone on while slowly evolving in complexity, the Met avoids audience boredom—always a clear and pleasant danger in an opera that runs roughly 4 hours in duration—with a cast of superior singers and endlessly changing setting is such wild variance as to allow the mind to move from music, to singing, to text, to visuals.
All of this staves off any potential boredom by constantly propelling consciousness from one realm to the other—probably pretty close to exactly what the composer had in mind.
We wondered what kind of audience this production would attract to one of the better Washington DC area theaters to view an HD opera simulcast, the IMAX screen in the Tysons Corner I Mall complex. We were surprised to find that A. This large theater was 2/3 full; and B. Nearly the entire audience stayed through until the end, actually applauding at the end of each act.
Well, why not. This reviewer would still probably have enjoyed Puccini, Wagner, or Verdi a lot more. But that said, there’s no point in fossilizing the repertoire, a phenomenon we've tended to experience with the Washington National Opera in recent, budget-strapped years. Whatever your attitude toward Glass musical style, Satyagraha probably won’t be blessed with a finer production for a very long time.
Phelim McDermott’s visuals and stage settings, not to mention those wild, giant puppets—mostly spun out of newspapers (alluding to Ghandi’s publications) and constantly morphing in unexpected ways—are eye-popping but not distracting as they are indeed part of this work’s organic whole. Costuming is slightly eccentric but also symbolically accurate, evolving from strict Western business dress toward the extreme in Hindu asceticism.
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra is uncannily accurate and precise in performing Glass’ difficult score—difficult not because its so complicated, but because it’s extraordinary amount of repetitiveness and evolving rhythmic complexity have the potential to cause even the finest of musicians to lose their collective places in the score. Guest conductor Dante Anzolini certainly must have worked hard with all his instrumentalists during rehearsals, which, we understand, were extensive.
Kudos as well to the opera’s chorus and soloists, all of whom in their own way had to deal with precisely the same issues as the players, but with the extra added attraction of having to learn to pronounce and sing Sanskrit while understanding the meaning of the words. While not really “acting” in the traditional theatrical-operatic sense of the word, the singers were also quite good in conveying what was going through their characters’ minds at every turn in the story line.
A big hat tip to Richard Croft in the huge role of Ghandi. Croft sang this role three years ago in the Met’s first performance of the work, and provided a confident, moving portrayal of the politician-prophet in the current iteration. Supporting singers Rachelle Durking (Miss Schlesen), Kim Josephson (Mr. Kallenbach), and Alfred Walker (Parsi Rustomji) gave Croft strong support throughout.
Tonight’s rebroadcast of Satyagraha begins at 6:30 “local” time, according to the Met’s PR release. For Washington area viewers, that must mean 6:30 p.m. EST. But check with your theater of choice (below) to verify the details. If you missed this production the first time around and would like to see what an enlightened, well-funded, and imaginatively mounted contemporary opera is all about, you’re well advised to give this production a try.
We’re going to try to get to a few more Met HD productions in the future, so watch this space as the second stanza of the Met’s 2011-2012 season unfolds.
Rating: **** (Four stars, highest rating.)
DC Area theaters showing Satyagraha and additional Met operas throughout the season:
Mazza Gallerie 7 – Washington, D.C.
Hoffman 22 with IMAX – Alexandria, VA
Potomac Yards Stadium 16 – Alexandria, VA
Ballston Commons 12 – Arlington, VA
Bowie Crossing 14 – Bowie, MD
Fairfax Towne Center – Fairfax, VA
Fredericksburg 14 – Fredericksburg, VA
Germantown 14 – Germantown, MD
Tyson's Corner 16 with IMAX – McLean, VA
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