The good news is that the ENO have revived Glass' earlier installment in his "Portrait Trilogy" SATYAGRAHA. The bad news is it's directed by Phelim McDermott. He's not really got any better.
All I knew of the opera was it was based on the life of Mahatma Gandhi - but no, not the famous bit... SATYAGRAHA focuses on his years working as a lawyer in South Africa, from 1910 to 1913. This saw the beginning of his idea of non-violent protest or 'Satyagraha' as he confronted the ruling powers in their racist persecution of the Indian community.
The libretto is convoluted and even frantic reading between the acts didn't help either - it doesn't help that the opera is sung in Sanskrit and that the sur-titles weren't on. It later turned out that the phrases that appeared on the back wall were what was being sung.. who knew. Three incidents are referenced: Gandhi setting up a communal farm named after his literary hero Tolstoy; Gandhi setting up the campaigning newspaper Indian Opinion; Gandhi leading a march of miners and their families to the Transvaal.
As with AKHNATEN, Glass' music is hypnotic and draws you into it's depths, swirling and eddying around until you are swept along again by a shift in the notes. What annoyed me so much about McDermott's direction was the ball-aching movement he grafts on his performers. All the singers m-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-v-e at a glacial pace - yes, Glass' music is minimal but hows about moving to the fast-moving beats within it occasionally? Imagine how exciting that would be Mr McDermott?
The music certainly sounded great, conductor Karen Kamensek was also in the pit for AKHNATEN and again, under her baton, the orchestra made Glass' score glow. However one feels that McDermott has concentrated all his efforts onto the visuals, especially Julian Crouch's design. There are certainly no stand-out performances per se, although Toby Spence impressed in the last act where his singing is musically the only game in town. Snaps too for the sumptuous lighting, originally by Paule Constable and recreated for this revival by Kevin Sleep.
Everything is thrown at the visuals: scenic effects, video projection, large-scale puppetry, fire, flying on wires... the whole mishpocha. But here, the visuals tend to be stand-alone effects... they do not illuminate what one is hearing or understanding: the start of the third act is mostly taken up with the ensemble SLOWLY crossing from left to right, both upstage and downstage, pulling sellotape across the stage at various heights... this goes on forever and for the wont of an OH WOW stage image - shimmering strands marking the march of the miners - the mind is distracted from the music and what is being told.
There were arresting stage images: a huge living ball of newspapers seeming coming to life at the back of the stage for Gandhi to enter it and emerge in the persona the world was to grow to know; waving waves of newsprint; giant warriors fighting each other in the opening scene based on the Mahabharata; a giant fire pit surrounded by Gandhi's acolytes... but the last stage image really irked me... a figure is on a tall podium at the back of the stage obviously giving a loooong speech while Gandhi sings "(God) comes into being age after age" and slowly (everything is done slowly as I said) wanders to the back of the stage to rest his hand on the podium by way of benediction... yes it's supposed to be Martin Luther King. All very hokey... you can tell it's written by an American!
Oh and one last thing... in these days of both non-traditionalist and strict ethnic casting - when did you last see a white Othello? - why were all the singers white? In these production photos, the cast looks more like the local operatic society from MIDSOMER MURDERS, in fact Toby Spence looks more like John Crippin than Mahatma Gandhi.
If this was a West End show there would be woolly liberal protesters around the theatre!
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