Philip Glass and "Satyagraha", the Opera

May 27, 2012

The famous music composer Philip Glass composed an Opera called Satyagraha on Mahatma Gandhi's movement against the South African apartheid laws (strictly speaking the system wasn't officially called apartheid until ater the Second World War). I was intrigued by this because the Wikipedia entry for this opera says that the opera is sung in Sanskrit. Yet the link to the libretto (the latin name for the lyrics of an opera) on the Metropolitan's website, shows the text in English. Act 1 of opera is titled "The Kuru Field of Justice" begins with Gandhiji narrating,

"I see them here assembled, ready to fight,
seeking to please the King’s sinful son by waging
war.” And thus addressed by Arjuna, Krishna
brought that splendid chariot to a halt between
the two armies. In front of Bhisma and Drona
and all the rulers of the world, he said, “Behold
Arjuna, these kinsmen assembled here.” And
the Prince marked on each hand relatives and
friends in both armies. Seeing them, all his kinsmen,
thus arrayed, Arjuna was filled with deep
compassion and turned to Krishna.

It is fascinating that the entire lyrics consists only of verses from the Bhagavad Geeta. Naturally, I wanted to know, "What was the impact on the audience?" I came across this review in the New York Review of Books. The review highlights the impact of the opera:

What the characters are actually uttering as this scene progresses—what, in fact, all the characters are uttering all the time throughout the various scenes—are passages from the Bhaghavad [sic] Gita, a text that had tremendous spiritual and aesthetic importance for Gandhi, and in which he found special significance for his life’s work. Naturally, this choice on the creators’ part may strike you as strange—the Times critic found “radical” what he referred to as “the complete separation of sung text from dramatic action, such as it is”—but the gesture is wholly of a piece with the larger project of Satyagraha, which everywhere forestalls our expectations of what should take place in an opera house.

It is, in any case, wholly inaccurate to characterize the Bhaghavad [sic] Gita texts as “completely separate” from the action: if you actually take the trouble to read the libretto, you can see that the Sanskrit texts have been chosen with great care. What the workers in the Indian Opinion scene are saying as they fold and pass along great sheets of newspaper is a highly poetic expression of what they are, in fact, doing: “Therefore, perform unceasingly the works that must be done, for the man detached who labors on to the highest must win through.” When Mrs. Alexander berates the mob that attacks Gandhi as he returns to South Africa, she angrily decries “the devilish folk” in whom “there is no purity, no morality, no truth. So they say the world has not a law nor order, nor a lord.” In the current Met production, no translation has been provided of the entire libretto, but as the production design incorporates projected portions of the sung texts, audience members get the gist of the necessary texts in each scene.

If, indeed, what Satyagraha aims at, in both its text and its music, is a kind of meditative state of spiritual elevation that allows us to think clearly about Gandhi’s goodness and its effects, rather than to get wrapped up in his “drama,” the use of these incantatory texts only enhances our sense that we’re participating in a kind of exalting ritual, rather than spending a couple of hours at the theater.

My curiosity is definitely aroused. While Youtube has many clips of the Opera, it is difficult to get the whole experience. I hope to see this live on stage someday and come back to report on it.

Hari Om and Namaskaar until the next post