The three Acts are each based around a ‘ spiritual guardian’ in Mahatma Gandhi’s early life in South Africa, with Tolstoy, Tagore and Martin Luther King Junior, representing the past, present and future of the ‘truth force’ of Satyagraha.
The orchestra only uses strings and woodwind.
Through-composed, it switches from lengthy solos and ensemble pieces to enormous chorus scenes, in this production backed by spectacular visuals. It is not a conventional opera, sung throughout in Sanskrit without an understandable libretto, in a sequence of seemingly unrelated tableaux, in random time frames, each with its own musical timbre. It follows ENO’s 2016 revival of Akhnaten, the third of a trilogy of operas, of which Satyagraha is the second. Its uncompromising approach to text and music seems to have appealed to the public, to the extent that it has just opened for its third revival. Witness the extraordinary life of Gandhi in Glass’s unforgettable opera by booking your tickets to ENO’s Satyagraha today.One of the surprises of the contemporary opera world is that the 2007 ENO premiere of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha broke all box office records, becoming the most popular contemporary work to be performed by ENO. Carolyn Kuan, ‘one of the most exciting and outstanding conductors of her generation’ (Marin Alsop) makes her ENO debut. Sean Panikkar, ‘a Gandhi firm of voice and full of charisma’ (LA Times) leads a cast that also features bass-baritone Musa Ngqungwana as Lord Krishna and Harewood Artist William Thomas as Parsi Rustomji. First staged in 2007, Phelim McDermott‘s acclaimed staging of Satyagraha is a spectacular visual feast.
Glass’s use of repetitive musical structures – ‘minimalism’– creates a mesmerising soundscape, quite unlike traditional operas. Philip Glass’s meditation on Gandhi’s early years in South Africa traces the progress of his concept of non-violent protest as a positive force for change. Rob Thirtle, Revival Movement Director Á Puppetry Julian Crouch, Set Designer Á Associate Director
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