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Music
and Lyrics
Philip Glass
(Lyrics
- after the Bhagavad-Gita)
Constance
DeJong
Director
Phelim McDermott
Design
Julian Crouch
Performers
Alan Oke
Elena Xanthoudakis
Janis Kelly
Anne Marie Gibbons
Jean Rigby
Ashley Holland
James Gower
Robert Poulton
Johanne Debus
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London
Coliseum
5
April - 1 May 2007 |
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This
was a night of firsts. It
was the dÈbut of the German
conductor from Frankfurt,
Johannes Debus, and it was
the first time the co-founders
and artistic directors of
the theatrical group Improbable
(Phelim McDermott and Julian
Crouch) had collaborated on
an opera. Most importantly,
it was the first time Philip
Glass's opera about Gandhi's
early life and political activities,
Satyagraha, had been staged
in London since its premiËre
in 1980. This was a long time
to wait, but the wait was
worthwhile.
The most striking aspect of
the evening was the production.
Improbable's Phelim McDermott
matches the slow unfolding
of the music with movements
that are more like tableaux
vivants than action. Everything
enhances the opera's spirit
of expository meditation,
and the principal characters
move only sparingly in each
scene. Much of the 'action'
is non-action. Instead, magnificent
images created by flying characters,
enormous papier-machÈ figures
of Hindu gods and modern moguls,
and symbolic icons (Tolstoy,
Rabindranath Tagore and Marthin
Luther King) appearing high
up like images from an Advent
calendar articulate and enrich
the gradually unfolding 'narration'.
The use of the newspaper Indian
Opinion, which became the
organ of the satyagraha movement
in South Africa, is strikingly
effective, as the long lines
of newspaper are made to represent
not only a means of communicating
ideas, but also to suggest
the loom out of which Gandhi
wove his own clothes as a
mark of his later complete
renunciation of modern conveniences.
Nothing that was seen lacked
several references. The evening
was rich in allusions.
The lighting of Paule Constable
also added enormously, and
effectively, to the slow mutation
of one scene into another,
particularly striking being
the change from a busy city-scape
to a fenced-off paddock.
What was heard was as good
as what was seen. Johannes
Debus elicited beautiful sounds
from the orchestra and remarkable
ensemble from the chorus,
both of which were excellently
balanced. And he managed to
pace the opera so that its
slow unraveling for the most
part did not slacken or pall,
though it is hard to imagine
any performance quite saving
the highly protracted final
act from flagging. The shifts
of orchestral sounds and combinations
that articulate changes in
scenes or personalities on
stage were masterfully executed.
Alan Oke's Gandhi was excellent,
particularly in the high lyrical
passages in the first act.
In harmony with the rest of
the production his carefully
controlled role was superbly
spaced across the evening.
Also remarkable were the vocal
acrobatics of Elena Xanthoudakis
as Gandhi's secretary Miss
Schlessen.
It would be hard to imagine
a more satisfying representation
of this opera, and as such
it is essential to see it.
Yet, I left with the uncomfortable
feeling that the hype that
surrounds Philip Glass's opera's
great intentions is based,
at least in part, on sand.
Somehow the slow, hypnotic
repetitions of the music suggest
less an engagement with a
real life controversial character
in a real life situation,
than the kind of images of
Christ that adorned the walls
of Sunday-schools and children's
hymn-books. The paradoxes
of passive resistance are
never engaged, but just presented
as self-evidently righteous.
Underlying this three-hour
pageant, despite its much
heralded learning, such as
being in Sanskrit, there is
little engagement with the
issues of its day, or even
our own. We all love peace,
but at any price? There is
little sense of the violence
done to the people for whom
Gandhi was struggling, nor
of the wider implications
of the kind of 'tolerance'
implied in the back-projected
unquestioned religious texts.
Gandhi (and Martin Luther
King) died violently and while
both presented great ideas
for a better world, even an
earthly paradise, neither
in the end succeeded in establishing
anything like that permanently.
Indeed, many people sitting
in the audience being lulled
into the world of satyagraha
are probably supporters of
wars whether on the battlefield
or the board-room. Couched
in the endless repetitive
sounds of Glass's 'minimalist'
style the issues raised by
pacificism or passive resistance
are made into self-fulfilling
religious truths, so the opera
ends more like a prayer-meeting
than a philosophical engagement
with the issues raised by
Gandhi's life. Glass's is
a very comfortable style:
a very acceptable form of
modernism. There is nothing
here not to like, except the
time it takes to unravel.
Keeping the momentum going
by subtle changes and echoes
of non-classical and non-western
musics is magnificently skilful.
But is that enough for anyone,
even Gandhi?
Roderick
Swanston |
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