Satyagraha
English National Opera, in rep until 26 March
When Philip Glass’s opera Satyagraha was first put on by ENO in 2007, I found it intolerably tedious, to the point where I felt that if I didn’t leave the theatre I might start to scream. Yet I came across quite a few people, some of them serious non-trendies whose views I share over a wide range of artistic and other matters, who found it compelling, moving, thought-provoking. So I felt that I needed to go back when it was revived last week for seven performances, having been by far the most successful contemporary opera that ENO has mounted. Obviously I was dreading the occasion, obviously I hoped I would change my mind.
And I did change my mind. I am by no means convinced that Satyagraha is a masterpiece, nor that I would want to see it many more times. I’d certainly like to see it a few more times, though, so long as I am in the right mood. Despite reading the propaganda put out on its behalf, I was not prepared, the first time I went, to abandon my demands for some degree of linear narrative, or for some involving dramatic moments and issues. So it wasn’t surprising that I was so bored, because you do have to take it in quite a different way, though some of the remarkable visual effects are so striking that you might well be misled into thinking they belonged to a thrilling drama.
It’s a pity that at least some members of the team who are responsible for this incredibly fine-looking, imaginative and perfectly executed ‘theatre event’ should feel the need to talk about it in such a pretentious way, but I suppose that is inescapable. Least helpful are the director Phelim McDermott and his associate, who also designed the sets, Julian Crouch, drawing analogies between ‘theatrical creativity’ and satyagraha, the latter meaning passive resistance, or, more literally, ‘truth force’. That kind of thing leads into an area where you can excitedly connect anything you find exciting with anything else: and that, up to a point, is what this opera does, though ‘exciting’ is not the mot juste.
Its three acts are meditations on formative events in Gandhi’s life, and three impressive names are invoked: Tolstoy, Tagore and Martin Luther King. Bits of narrative are indicated, both in the programme and by written projections on the corrugated wall of the stage, and so are excerpts from the Bhagavad Gita. You do need to know something about Gandhi, but probably no more than is provided in the programme. There you also find a synopsis of the action, which is, however, pretty loosely connected to what you see on stage; and a complete translation of the text, which is sung or chanted by the individual named singers or the chorus or both. The dedication that they have put into learning this huge score, and the conviction with which they perform it, are not only beyond praise but also beyond imagination — there is so much repetition. It must still seem odd, too, that a theatre which is dedicated to performing everything in English, as well as providing English surtitles, should perform this one opera in Sanskrit, with no surtitles.
Which all goes to show that you have to get yourself into a frame of mind where you don’t worry about what precisely is being chanted, that you gamely take on board the rather random projected excerpts from the Bhagavad Gita, and that you give yourself up to marvelling at the astounding array of vast puppets of fish and flesh that are paraded around and above the stage, and let yourself free-associate with the images you see, encouraged and up to a point guided by the insistent chanting, and the passages of ravishing solo singing provided by the extremely strong cast.
It seemed to me that the performance, under the inspiring guidance of Stuart Stratford, was more confident than it was in 2007. Alan Oke’s Gandhi, though he is not a character in the usual sense, conveys his movement to dignity and authority with a power worthy of his great teacher Hans Hotter. Any attempt to relate what you are seeing and hearing closely to the mood or drift of the opera would be doomed. The kind of relationship that you can establish is most easily seen from going to www.eno.org/explore and following the score (it is made very easy to do that) while listening. An almost full house was clearly spellbound by the experience, though any idea that it might ‘bring people to opera’ is absurd, since this is not opera but something midway between a musical and ritual. Its most pervasive feature, and that which its admirers find most alluring, is large-scale incomprehensibility, something it shares with the major religions, clothed in glamorous trappings and promising a revelation which never comes but would surely be tremendous if it did.
Comments