Satyagraha, English National Opera, review

From Akhnaten in the 1980s to The Perfect American only last summer, English National Opera has enjoyed a long and adventurous connection with the works of Philip Glass. But Satyagraha stands out. An unexpected success when staged in 2007 by the theatre company Improbable – a first opera for the director Phelim McDermott and designer Julian Crouch – it is surely the most distinctive and brilliant achievement on the London operatic scene in more than a decade.

This is one of the those rare productions that truly enhances an opera, combining with the score to create a Wagner-like “Gesamtkunstwerk”(total art work) in which every element matters equally. The result is a powerful meditation on Gandhi’s years in South Africa (1893-1914) and his formulation there of non-violent resistance. In a world where violence is still the status quo, Gandhi’s “truth force” – the term he coined as “satyagraha” – can never be untopical.

A heavy peacefulness descends on the Coliseum as the score unfolds, and though the conductor Stuart Stratford brings clarity to Glass’s slowly shifting, minimalist textures, he also finds a haunting melancholy in the music. In a sort of scenic choreography, the sets and props dissolve and reassemble in matching slow motion, and such poor materials as corrugated iron and newsprint – a reminder of the newspaper Gandhi founded – become the visual motifs. Giant papier mâché effigies evoke battling gods and po-faced politicians.

Past, present, future: each of the three acts is named after an icon representing Gandhi’s continuity, and we see the figures of Leo Tolstoy, Rabindranath Tagore and Martin Luther King. But the cross-cutting of actual events in Johannesburg and Natal ensures a non-linear structure in keeping with eastern philosophical thought. Though the opera resists the deification of Gandhi, we witness his spiritual journey from dapper young lawyer to prison-weary guru, and Alan Oke gives a magnificently calm performance, wrapping his dark and flexible tenor around Glass’s repetitive lines to create long musical paragraphs.

There are no weak links in the cast, but Nicholas Folwell as Gandhi’s friend Kallenbach, Stephanie Marshall as his wife Kasturbai and Clare Eggington as his secretary Miss Schlesen (her high soprano riding the ensembles) are outstanding. ENO’s chorus (like everyone else, singing in Sanskrit) and orchestra are valiant. It’s hard to imagine Satyagraha ever being better done, yet difficult to believe that ENO will revive the show again. Do anything – anything non-violent, of course – to see it now.

Until December 8 Tickets: 020 7845 9300 www.eno.org

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