Philip Glass
Satyagraha – Opera in three acts to a book by the composer and Constance DeJong adapted from the text of the Bhagavada Gita and loosely based on the life of Mahatma Gandhi [sung in Sanskrit]
Miss Schlesen – Gabriella Cassidy
Mrs Naidoo – Verity Wingate
Kasturbai – Felicity Buckland
Mr Kallenbach – James Cleverton
Parsi Rustomji – William Thomas
Lord Krishna – Musa Ngqungwana
Mrs Alexander – Sarah Pring
Prince Arjuna – Ross Ramgobin
Chorus & Orchestra of English National Opera
Carolyn Kuan
Julian Crouch – Associate director & Set designer
Peter Relton – Revival director
Kevin Pollard – Costume designer
Paule Constable – Lighting designer
Kevin Sleep– Revival lighting director
Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer for 59 Productions – Video design
Jane Michelmore – Revival video designer
Rob Thirtle – Movement and puppetry director
Reviewed by: Alexander Campbell
Reviewed: 14 October, 2021
Venue: The Coliseum, London
English National Opera has always done well by its staging of works by Philip Glass and has certainly created a London following for them. No doubts that this fourth revival of Phelim McDermott’s spectacular production dating from 2007 will continue to draw appreciable audiences during this run as the city’s musical life starts to re-emerge. Indeed, at the start of the performance, the first of the season, there were short positive welcoming speeches by the company’s CEO Stuart Murphy, Artistic Director Annilese Miskimmon, Music Director Martyn Brabbins and Board Chair Dr Harry Brünjes, each reflecting on the turbulence of the past years and also the commitment of all members of the company to ride the storms and make contributions, particularly in lending skills support to the NHS and in mounting some unusual and adventurous productions.
In the current political climate, Satyagraha’s overarching theme of mass non-violent opposition to entrenched historic and casual injustice seems more pertinent than ever in Peter Relton’s assured revival. Rightly, this staging has always been praised for its visual imagery and theatricality bringing cogency to the loose narrative and a sense of meditative ritual to its pageant-like depiction of events. Satyagraha is sung in Sanskrit, the important texts projected in English onto Julian Crouch’s monumental yet adaptable sets. The whole plays like a gradually shifting set of tableaux vivants with strands linking every scene – notably the visual transformation of Gandhi from western-attired lawyer to the more familiar image of simply-clothed, bespectacled, bald ‘spiritual’ leader of a growing movement through violence against him and rejection of worldly vanities. Also threading-through are reams of loose newsprint paper – reminding us that the printed and spoken word played as important a role in influencing lives then as social media perhaps does today.
Improbable’s trademark use of transparent adhesive tape, particularly in the final Act and with some brilliant lighting, helps create some arresting visual references – as barriers, bridges, walls of camps of internment (or worse), flow of time or whatever your mind suggests. The large-scale semi-grotesque puppetry devices, largely used to depict events in the writings of the Bhagavada Gita are beautiful and intriguing. The presence of ‘living’ depictions of the men who inspired Gandhi’s thinking or inherited his torch (Tolstoy, Tagore and Martin Luther King) is just that – present.
Carolyn Kuan has the complete measure of the ebb and flow of the score, propulsive or reflective as needed, and allows Glass’s repetitious contrapuntal effects to sound out with amazing clarity and nuance. The Chorus is in glorious form, singing with gusto or with amazing collective dynamic control. There is an excellent cast of principals. The lynchpin was Sean Pannikar’s Gandhi – beautifully sung and enacted, and with a meltingly beautiful mezza voce in the final moments, and at the start of the final scene of the second Act, ‘Protest’. Notable is Sarah Pring’s fruitfully sung, courageous Mrs Alexander who steals her scene entirely. William Thomas’s interpretation of Parsi Rustomji reveals an ample, resonant bass voice that shows enormous promise. The smaller roles encapsulate an ensemble in ripe vocal health and with real stage presence.
A thoughtful and rewarding evening – even if you are a Glass sceptic, catch it if you can.
Further performances on October 16, 17 (mat), 20, 23, 27 and 28