Work Information
| commissioned by the City of Rotterdam |
| Publisher |
Dunvagen Music Publishers Inc |
Category |
Opera and Music Theatre |
| Year Composed |
1980 |
Duration |
3 Hours |
| Solo Voice(s) |
2 Sopranos, 2 Mezzo Sopranos, 2 Tenors, Baritone, 2 Basses |
Chorus |
SATB (large chorus) |
| Orchestration |
3(pic).3.3(bcl).2/0.0.0.0/eorg/str |
Languages |
Sanskrit |
| Availability |
Hire Explain this... |
Discography |
Here... |
Programme Note
The second in Glass' trilogy about men who changed the world, Satyagraha's sub-text is politics. The opera is semi-narrative in form and deals with Mahatma Gandhi's early years in South Africa and his development of non-violent protest into a political tool. (Satyagraha is a Sanskrit word meaning 'truth force'). The first two acts each contain three scenes; the last is one continuous scene. Each act is dominated by a single historic figure (non-singing role) overlooking the action from above: the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore in Act I, the Russian author Leo Tolstoy in act II, the American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., in Act III.
Reviews
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Everybody who is anybody flocked to the Met on April 11 for what Peter Gelb unblushingly labelled 'a modern masterpiece....the orchestra under Dante Anzolino made the chugging ostinatos and shimmering arpeggios flirt with poetry...
Martin Bernheimer, Opera Magazine, 01/06/2008
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Satyagraha is...Glass's masterpiece, the work in which his musical style finds its most perfect and personal expression: the sort of interlocking and overlapping repetitions that in other contexts might do your head in are essential to the meditative nature of this piece. With its slowly shifting timbres, Glass's music has always had an integrity that's missing in, say, the more 'maximalist' style of John Adams, another composer interested in modern historical figures, and that purity finds a natural outlet in Satyagraha. A continuous cross-cutting of of actual events in Johannesburg and Natal gives the three acts a non-linear structure that is also in keeping with Eastern philosophical thought. As the opening solo is gradually gathered up into duet, trio and- eventually- a stirring chorus, the cumulative power of Glass's music takes hold: the music at the start is of a haunting beauty that sometimes recalls the sensuousness of Monteverdi...
John Allison, The Sunday Telegraph, 15/04/2007
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[Satyagraha's] primary aim is to present Gandhi's work and thought as a tremendous achievement within the continuum of non-violent ideology. The text derives from the Bhagavad Gita with its vision of the spiritually secure, peaceful warrior aware of the inviolable divinity within all beings. In keeping with eastern philosophical thought, past, present and future are elided and the narrative glides backwards and forwards through time...The repetitive figurations of Glass's music, meanwhile, act like mantras, and aim to quieten the jangling of our own minds as we watch and listen. It is an astonishingly beautiful work, though some may find Glass's idiom forbidding...It is impossible, however, to imagine a better execution...'
Tim Ashley, The Guardian, 07/04/2007
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