Satyagraha - Philip Glass

This is an opera by Philip Glass we went to see.  This is the only performance piece I haven't made it all the way through.  It's a pretty weird opera.  It's (very) loosely based on Gandhi's time in South Africa.  To be honest I never knew Gandhi spent anytime in South Africa, so I was coming from a long way back with this opera.  I was trying to get some background on what Gandhi got up to in South Africa to give me some idea of what was going to happen in the opera (I shouldn't have bothered really).  There wasn't a heap I could come up with, he was beaten up a few times, it's where he first got his ideas of nonviolent protest, but overall, there's not a lot of "narrative".

I know operas don't generally have a lot of plot, boy meets girl, boy can't be with girl for any number of implausible reasons, boy gets girl/someone dies, the end.  But then it's really all about the music, the plot is just a vehicle for some nice sounds.  I've heard some of Glass' orchestral works, and quite liked them, so thought the opera would be nice to listen to as well.

The day of the opera I did a bit more reading, still desperately trying to work out what the story was going to be about.  I find out that Philip Glass got his start in experimental theatre, that the opera was going to be sung entirely in Sanskrit, there were not going to be any surtitles, and the words were taken from the Bhagavad Gita, which is some 700 verse epic Hindu poem.  So not a lot to do with Gandhi's life in South Africa.  Well, still the music could be nice.

The best I could say about it was that the stage production was good, they were doing interesting things with puppets and paper.  But that is seriously about it, the music was lacking any sort of melody.  If you ever wonder what modern composers do, they are still trying to push their art form forward I guess, then go see one of Glass' operas, and you'll see the direction it's taking.  It was a lot of droning, and people standing around on stage, unfortunately the orchestra didn't really get much of a look in.  And since you had no idea what was going on, it was kind of hard to get engaged.  Sorry Glass, I guess I'm not quite ready for experimental opera, with no plot, or musicality.  Perhaps in 20 years time.