Continuing the series mash-up of SNLC and Demi Moaned's occasional DK opera series, 3CM begins this one by asking:
Anyone see the Met-HD Satyagraha today?
You can read more about the Met's production here. This opera is a definite change from the Met's usual fare, not just the HD-casts but in general, since its composer, Philip Glass, is still very much alive. In fact, he took a bow at the end of the HD-cast today.
Even if you don't know opera or Philip Glass, the title should be recognizable as connected to Mohandas K. Gandhi. Although this revival was planned well before Occupy Wall Street was even a gleam in anyone's eye, the Mahatma's message of non-violent protest to effect social change obviously takes on extra meaning now. More on the opera and HD-cast below the flip....
I should also first explain that the Met first staged Satyagraha in 2008, as reviewed in the NYT here. You can see a video posted from the NYT related to the production from around that time here:
You can obviously look through the Met's own site for extra goodies, of course. The review of the revival is at this link. This opera is not a conventional linear dramatic narrative, far from it, more of a state of mind, to be flip about it, especially given that Philip Glass is the composer, after all. About the story and setting the libretto, Anthony Tommasini notes in his review:
"The libretto, assembled by the novelist Constance DeJong, consists of philosophical sayings from the Bhagavad-Gita, the sacred Hindu epic poem. Mr. Glass honors the text by keeping it in the original Sanskrit and setting every syllable clearly. This production dispenses with Met Titles on the theory that the audience would actually be distracted by paying attention to the words, which at best serve as commentary. Instead key phrases in English are projected on a semicircular corrugated wall that forms the backdrop of the production’s gritty and elemental set."
The "plot", such as it is, focuses on Gandhi's early years in South Africa, where the seeds of his ideas about non-violent resistance began. I put "plot" in quotes because, as Tommasini wrote back in 2008:
"Satyagraha invites you to turn off the part of your brain that looks for linear narrative and literal meaning in a musical drama and enter a contemplative state"
No kidding. There's barely any action to speak of in terms of plot, such as in Act II, Scene 1, when a street crowd attacks Gandhi, or in Scene 3, when Gandhi organizes Indians resident in South Africa to burn their registration cards, as required under the Black Act. In addition, as Tommasini noted in his review, the sung Sanskrit lines were not directly translated for the Met titles on the backs of the chairs in the hall, or as subtitles for the audience. We (and they) only got the select projected titles.
When I was in NYC around the time of the first run of Satyagraha, since I didn't plan ahead, I missed it by one week. Although I'm not particularly a Philip Glass fan, I would have gone to see this live in the house had I been there, even though I hadn't heard it before. I'd heard the radiocast of the opera, admittedly "cold", i.e. without the texts in front of me, but more in just letting the spell of the music wash over me. So I was extremely pleased to learn that the Met was including this as part of their HD-casts.
After seeing it, I have to admit to mixed opinions overall. One can joke that with a Philip Glass opera, was anything other than a glacially slow pace of dramatic action, besides the very repetitive music, to be expected? For the first 2 acts, I pretty much accepted the pacing as it was, even if I did nod off at moments. It was towards the end, in the second part of Act 3, after the "cellophane tape" scene (you had to have seen it to understand), where it was just Gandhi alone, and an extra miming as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background, that the repetition really got to me, as well as the lack of understanding of the text. It seemed that Richard Croft, as Gandhi, kept singing the same text over and over, with the music at a really drawn-out tempo, for a scene that could easily have been half the length.
I could certainly accept that there wasn't a conventional plot as such, which I knew going in. It was Glass' own choice, presumably with Constance DeJong's consent, not to give the translated text. However, given the rationale that Tommasini described, I very much disagree with the choice. For one, I can speed-read the translated opera titles while listening to the singers, and at least knowing what the singers were singing would have provided some context, or at least a sense of why the texts were chosen and placed where they were. In short, I would not have been distracted by reading the translated text at all. I think I would have liked things much more.
Having said that, on to the many good parts, starting with the singers. Croft got some brickbats last season as Loge during the HD-cast of Wagner's Das Rheingold, where apparently people actually in the house couldn't hear him. He actually got some boos at that Wagner curtain call. No such reaction here, because he did a splendid job as Gandhi. Perhaps his voice did seem small at times, and who's to say that maybe in the house, he got swallowed in the vast space. During the intermission chit-chat with bass-baritone Eric Owens (the Alberich in the new Met Ring, BTW), while Croft seemed a little nervous with interviewing, he very wisely and sharply noted that, beyond the obvious difficulties of learning Sanskrit, the lines in the libretto are not lines that any of the characters said to each other in real life. Thus that element of "drama" is lacking as well. Gandhi knew the Bhagavad-Gita well, of course, so Croft pointed out that this opera could be seen as sort of a external manifestation of Gandhi's ruminations on the Bhagavad-Gita.
All the solo singers also did very well, given the difficulties of the job, not to mention the chorus. The Met's chorus master, Donald Palumbo, also got some interview time, and rightly so. Palumbo noted that the next most difficult opera for the chorus to learn its part was Mussorgsky's Khovanschina, for obvious reasons of language. There was also an intermission interview with Julian Crouch, the associate director, and two members of The Skills Ensemble. (The Skills Ensemble took a curtain call, of course, but Crouch didn't. Perhaps as "associate director", not quite high enough in the hierarchy to warrant a curtain call.) Last, and far from least, the orchestra and conductor Dante Anzolini held the proceedings together magnificently, where one can imagine that everyone involved had never had to count in their heads so much in their lives.
In addition, Glass himself was interviewed twice, at the beginning with Met general manager Peter Gelb, and just before Act 3 with Owens. Obviously, Glass was very gracious and generous with his praise of the Met and of the production, which was quite imaginative visually, mixing in puppetry, lots of images related to newspapers (in turn related to Gandhi's paper Indian Opinion), and the one scene with the adhesive tape. For the record, Glass and Croft took the last solo curtain calls from the line together at the end.
My opera companion said that she found this opera very boring, and she's seen one of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Licht operas in Europe, which are even more protracted. While I can understand her sentiments, given the efforts that I realize that the musicians and the production crew put in, I was inclined to be a little less harsh in speaking out at the end. I blame the longueurs of the second half of Act 3 on Glass.
So, overall, while I'm not in a particular hurry to see this opera again on the big screen, I'm glad that I did see it. However, the movie theater was barely half-full for this one, so Philip Glass is still too "radical" for many of the moldy figs among the opera-going set here. I suspect that Gelb may realize that in the overall success of the Met HD-casts in movie houses around the country, he may have to take a loss on this one. But Renee Fleming is next up on December 3 in Handel's Rodelinda, so we'll see.
Oh, and since this is Daily Kos, I have to include a bit of politics, which fortunately author Joseph Lelyveld, the author of a recent (and somewhat controversial) book on Gandhi provided. While providing a whirlwind tour of narration of Gandhi's years in South Africa, he compared the Black Act to Arizona's recent racial profiling legislation against Hispanics. One wonders how the Met HD audiences in Arizona reacted to that. If, by a billion to one shot, anyone is reading this diary from Arizona who saw the Met-HD Satyagraha now, please feel free to say if anyone got a rise at Lelyveld's comment.
With that, time for either:
(a) Your loser stories of the week, or:
(b) Actual discussion of Satyagraha.
Or you can, as so often happens with SNLC, post about none of the above :) .