The curtain opens to a cavernous stage with a dazed man in English attire looking at the scattered contents of a suitcase. After several moments of silence, the word Kurukshetra is projected onto the background. So begins the fabulous Lincoln Center production of the opera Satyagraha, composed by Philip Glass. It was first conceived in 1978 and was performed in 1980 for the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam. With its hundred-person cast, hundred-member orchestra, and imaginatively designed sets, puppets and mythical characters on stilts, the three and half hour opera was a thrilling invitation to reflect on the movement created by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa and continued by Martin Luther King in the United States. Four thousand people in Lincoln Center rose to their feet to laud the artists for a creative and memorable musical experience.

The opera maps Gandhi’s life in South Africa to the accompaniment of stanzas from the Bhagavad-gita. These stanzas and the opera’s opening imagery suggest how Gandhi’s experiments re-enact the Mahabharata story. The poet of the Gita shows how our confusion can incapacitate us, how our will power can prompt us to act, how our actions, when done for a higher cause, can win us merit in this world and the next. This message is recapitulated in Satyagraha. Philip Glass, a “minimalist” composer, relies heavily on repetitions to deliver his message. Most of the singing and orchestration sound like a chant and suggest that frequent repetition of precepts and knowledge help to reinforce determination for a long-term struggle. Through its operatic medium Satyagraha offers a trenchant psychological analysis of the early career of one of the twentieth century’s dominant personalities.  

The opera moves from a dawn to dusk, slowing down as the day proceeds. It has three Acts, each with three scenes. The last Act simultaneously presents Gandhi and King. The director Phelim McDermott and the set designer created the elaborate staging with puppets and the aerial motion, for a production in the English National Opera in 2007 and in the Met production of 2008. Its musical minimalism and the theme of simplicity and detachment are reinforced by the use of “humble” objects as paper balls and corrugated iron to create scenes of protest and fighting.  The director sees the opera as a portrayal of Gandhi’s meditative preparation for his protest march in New Castle.  Gandhi considers how to try out his method of non-violent boycott and allow pain and suffering to be inflicted on his protesters by the police and jail wardens. The animated stage, the chant music, the slow moves and the slow wandering of solitary Gandhi gives an aura of confusion and suspense gathering into determination as the final screen drops.

From the first scene at the Pretoria station, where Gandhi was famously ejected from a first class train compartment in 1883 because of his “color”, the story moves to Tolstoy Farm, where a self-sufficient community flourishes. Looking down from the balcony, Tolstoy blesses the efforts of the satyagrahis’ preparation towards “self-purification” and “self-reliance.” The farm is symbolized by planting, baskets and cooperation. The operatic chorus repeats the Gita’s message of work as a spiritual exercise. Women’s movements emphasize the Gita’s teaching that work is better than idleness and that selfless, disinterested action is best.  The South African host Mrs. Kallenbach joins Gandhi’s wife Kasturba in characterising the nature of the person who is dedicated to work, particularly “surmounting all dualities”, being the “same in success and failure.”   In the third scene the Parsi Rustomji’s forceful baritone aria depicts the determination of a resolute person. The Gita thunders: “Whoever abandons a deed because it causes pain, or because he shrinks from bodily pain, follows the path of darkness.”

The second Act begins with Gandhi’s visit to India and his return to Durban in 1896. Gandhi comes to know Rabindranath Tagore.  Tagore looks down from the balcony as Tolstoy did in the first Act. Gandhi, in danger of a beating by local people, is rescued by the wife of the police chief. Mrs. Alexander sings from the Gita “the devilish folk, in them is no purity, no morality, no truth…. Maddened by pride and hypocrisy…. They have no other aim than to satisfy their pleasure…. So speak the fools.” The chorus of the local White people recites the sarcastic words of the Gita: “This I have gained today …. This wealth is mine .… I’ve killed him .… I’m the master …. Who can match himself with me.” In this brilliantly done scene Gandhi’s views are portrayed as nobler than the majority.

The second scene of Act II shows the publication of the paper “Indian Opinion” in 1906. The  few initial papers soon grow into a flood, though all the work is still done by hand.  The scene is marked by intense imagery, repetitive music and occasional action. Gita teachings are presented in arias of Mrs. Kellebach and Mrs. Schlessen: “With senses freed, wise men should act, longing to bring welfare and coherence to the world …. for the man detached who labors on the highest must win through.” Blessings come in the chorus: “Act as God does for the sake of others …. If I were not to do my work these worlds would fall into ruin and I would be a worker in confusion.” In the third scene a resolute Gandhi emerges, immersing himself in the Lord’s message in the Gita: “Let a man feel hatred for no being, let him be friendly, compassionate, done  away with the thoughts of “I” and ‘mine”, the same in pleasure and as in pain, long suffering …. I love the man who is same to friend and foe, the same whether he be respected or despised, the same in heat and cold, in pleasure as in pain, who has put away attachment .. .. having no home, of steady mind, but loyal-devoted-and-devout.”

Act III begins with the dressing of the preacher (King) who rides up to the balcony and makes  oratorical gestures throughout the Act. Kasturba and Naidoo sing from the Gita: “In what for others is night, therein is the man of self-restraint wide awake, separate from passion and hate, self-possessed and drawing near to calm serenity … This is the fixed, still state, which sustains even at the time of death..” The Gita doctrine of reincarnation is symbolized on stage by many strands of thread woven in a continuous pattern. Gandhi is one side and King is on the other with the indication of a progress of time and with a perception of reincarnation. Gandhi sings the Lord’s message “Whenever the law of righteousness withers away and lawlessness arises, then do I generate myself on earth. I come into being in age after age and take a manifested shape and move a man with men for the protection of good, thrusting the evil back and setting virtue on her seat again.”

Gandhi prepares for the New Castle march. Women satyagrahis take the lead and government tax papers are thrown into a fire. The miners join in with only their clothes and blankets. They have a strategy in their march to Transval: if arrested, they would flood the jails; if allowed to proceed they could increase their number significantly by adding the farm workers and the laborers. The arrests begin, Gandhi is left alone. Standing apart, moving around, contemplative, meandering in slow steps, Gandhi moves towards King’s balcony, blesses it and continues his slow advance, absorbed in meditation for the struggle. The repetitive music reflects Gandhi’s state of mind. Gandhi sings: “I consort with Nature and come to be in time.” Gandhi looks towards the distant horizon. It’s dusk. The curtain drops to thunderous applause.

Though I have fair proficiency in Sanskrit, I found the operatic singing of Sanskrit hard to follow and could only occasionally recognize a few words. Contrary to normal current practice in staging foreign language presentations, the text was not translated, as the writer and the director declare Sanskrit to be a universal language. The music had no brass, no percussion. An electric organ supported the strings. Wind instruments pipes indicating action on the stage could also be heard. The Argentinian conductor Dane Anzolini was careful, meticulous in what must have been the difficult task of maintaining the tempo in the wavelike recitation. The orchestra played excellently.

My son Siddhartha, who is a professional opera tenor, accompanied me. He loved the tenor Richard Croft, who played Gandhi. I liked Rustomji, played by the base-baritone Alfred Walker. Kim Josephson, who played the baritone role of Mr. Kellenbach, had a powerful voice and gestures. His voice seemed to inspire the plants to grow in Tolstoy Farm. Mrs. Schlessen’s resolved determination was conveyed by soprano Rachelle Durkin from Australia.

It was an enchanting afternoon with smiles all around.

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