Sean Panikkar (M.K. Gandhi), Musa Ngqungwana (Lord Krishna), William Thomas (Parsi Rustomji), Felicity Buckland (Kasturbai), James Cleverton (Mr Kallenbach), Sarah Pring (Mrs Alexander), Ross Ramgobin (Prince Arjuna), Gabriella Cassidy (Miss Schlesen). Conductor: Carolyn Kuan, Director: Phelim McDermott, Revival Director: Peter Relton, Set Designer/Associate Director: Julian Crouch
Unwittingly – sort of – I had booked myself in not only to the first performance this year of Philip Glasss’ Satyagraha at the ENO, but the first time they had performed back in the London Coliseum since March 2020. It’s the first time I’ve been in the Coliseum since November 2019 (oddly, to see another Glass opera – Orphee). After 5 visits to Covent Garden over the past three months, the Coliseum felt an enormous, cavernous building, not particularly welcoming, but I was reminded that it was a venue where the voices and orchestra sound much warmer and more vibrant than they do in the drier Covent Garden acoustic. Though the performance was – as above – a rather special one, and with speeches beforehand by the ENO management team, the auditorium wasn’t by any means full. That doesn’t bode well for (an-already-beleaguered-before-the-pandemic) ENO. I wonder if the old idea of Georg Solti’s – put ENO and ROHCG Opera into Covent Garden, and the Royal and Sadlers’ Well Ballet Companies into the Coliseum – hasn’t finally come to seem rather sensible. Or even – given that the ENO is only giving 67 performances this season, put both opera companies into Covent Garden and keep the ballet. There does seem to be overlap in the current season between the two houses – eg both offering Cosi Fan Tutte, two Rings being planned, two La Boheme’s happening this season etc; this is hard to justify.
This production has been on the ENO’s books since 2007, and is well known and appreciated, although I’ve not seen it before. Phelim McDermott was the original director, and I was first introduced to his work watching the Tao of Glass in June 2019 at the Manchester International Festival – it has many of the same approaches to staging, writ large, including puppets, the use of paper shapes, and imaginative lighting. It does everything it could for the work. Rather stupidly I hadn’t worked out who the dominating figures were at the back or side of the stage in each of the three acts – Tolstoy, Tagore and Martin Luther King – until I talked to the friend I was with, who’d seen it before.
Listening to Satyagraha made me realise what it must be for non-Wagner enthusiasts sitting through the more slowly-paced parts of the Ring. Some of it was very beautiful, some of it was dramatic, but there were times when it was just mind-numbingly, tediously, repetitive. Yes, I know that Satyagraha is not a work that’s meant to be conventionally dramatic, I know it’s contemplative and meditative in form and meaning, but still…..I thought I’d scream after the 20th repetition in the final scene of the 8 note melody Gandhi sings (rather lovely though that tune is). The problem I think is that Glass rather contradicts himself in his approach – the 2nd Act is in fact quite dramatic, with lots of action on the stage and reasonably contrasted successive scenes. The final act by contrast is unvaryingly slow-moving, and relatively little happens (apart from arrests of course). So maybe I am just not in tune with the nature of Glass’ art…….
As far as I could tell, the solo singing was uniformly good (with Sean Pannikar as a particularly strong voiced and clear Gandhi) , the ENO Chorus fantastic, and the orchestra deserves a collective medal for getting through the score – with so many repetitive figures, it must be a nightmare to count the bars for the next entry or to know when to stop, but they seemed to manage without any glitches. The production is great – but……probably seeing it once is enough for me
John's musical journey 