SO. I'd been wanting to watch this ever since seeing Akhnaten. There was a Live in HD Met performance in, I think, 2011, but due to something or other having to do with the licensing, it ain't available on disc or On Demand or anything. On the plus side, there is an older production from 1983 on DVD. On the minus side, it's super out-of-print, and am I willing to pay a hundred fifty dollars for it? I mean, given the lengths I've gone to see operas, it probably wouldn't come as a surprise. Still, the idea gave me pause. But I would periodically check ebay, and I finally found a copy for a reasonable-ish price, so I pounced. And that is the story of how I came to see Satyagraha.
It's a Sanskrit word, meaning "truthful force" or "forceful truth" or something like that. It's what Gandhi called his principle of non-violent resistance. The libretto consists entirely of extracts from the Bhagavad Gita, and thus, this is my first, and almost certainly the only, Sanskrit-language opera (here is a helpful Wikipedia list of "Sanskrit-language operas," and, yup, this is the only one. I feel like you need at least two of something to have a "list"). It's considered to be part of a loose trilogy with Einstein on the Beach and Akhnaten, each serving as a sort of portrait of a famous person and treating of a major aspect of human existence: Einstein/science, Gandhi/politics, and Akhnaten/religion.
So yes. This is putatively about Gandhi and the development of the non-violent resistance principle. It takes place--I think, in theory--during his earlier life as a civil rights activist in South Africa. It's far more recognizable than Einstein as an opera: things happen, and there are characters who sing arias. That said, the action was still mostly inscrutable to me, and while that's partially because of the nature of the narrative, I think this is also a case where if you don't already have a pretty in-depth knowledge of the history, you're not going to get much of anywhere. Each of the three acts is...well, supposedly "about" a figure related to Gandhi's life: first it's Leo Tolstoy, with whom he apparently corresponded in his youth; then Rabindranath Tagore, who was a friend of his; and finally, Martin Luther King Jr, on whom he himself was an influence. But, while it's easy to connect the third act (most of which consists of a protest) to King, the other two...you have one hundred percent got me.
And yet, that somehow doesn't matter, because even if you don't quite know the context for a given scene, you can still kind of feel the relevant emotion. There is a LOT of stuff here that's just powerful on its own, and DAMN is Glass' music great. I mean...really. I know there are a lot of people who hate him, who think he's just the absolute worst clothesless emperor ever, but...really, people, that's just pathetic. You really settled on this extremely likable composer as your bête noire? You couldn't put a little effort into it to find someone legitimately bad and annoying? Crikey. This is mesmerizing stuff, and I do feel that the Sanskrit really adds something: maybe I'm just saying this because I knew in advance that that's what it was and my mind filled in the blanks, but it just seems to really work with the subject matter, and be an appropriate language for this kind of music. Right on!
I wasn't sure what the disc quality would be like; it has mixed reviews on amazon. But I actually thought it was fine. The visuals are a little murky in places, but not in a way that presents any barrier to enjoyment; it's a very elaborate, colorful production, and that shows. Similar comment on the sound, I suppose: it's not absolutely crystal-clear, cutting-edge audio, but it's more than enough. I am extremely satisfied. I still hope that at some point, somehow, that Met in HD version is made public, because I can only imagine how awesome this would be in a new production with perfect sound and video.
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