Glass: Satyagraha

Glass: Satyagraha

<i>Satyagraha</i> remains, decades after its composition, one of Philip Glass's most traditional works. An emphasis on strings and on courtly, European-toned small choruses lends the opera a sense of musical familiarity rarely evidenced in the composer's extensive catalog. The libretto, though written in Sanskrit, is often mistakable, sonorously, for Italian. <i>Satyagraha</i>'s relative independence from the internecine Indian raga-like patterns of the composer's other long-form work is particularly ironic given the opera's subject: Mahatma Ghandi, whose native country's ritual culture and spiritual heritage have long informed Glass's music. This is no dramatic biography; following a mythological gambit, the scenes focus on a handful of specific events in Ghandi's long life (the construction of a communal farm, his tumultuous arrival in Durban, the publication of the weekly broadside <i>Indian Opinion</i>). Pointedly, the opera is an international affair, each of its three acts referencing a major cultural figure: Leo Tolstoy, Rabindranath Tagore, and Martin Luther King Jr. The music is most interesting when Glass draws parallels between his patented, minimalist patterns and standard classical mode. <I>--Marc Weidenbaum</I>