Word: satyagraha
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Composers have long recognized the hypnotic impact of repeated melody: the grinding pathos of the Albinoni Adagio; the inexorable drive of Ravel's Bolero; the serene radiance of Gandhi's final aria in Glass's Satyagraha. None of these pieces, however, approach in length or cumulative impact a new work by British composer Gavin Bryars, Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, which is at once an apotheosis of minimalist technique and a moving affirmation of the power of simple song...
...sold out the rented house on two successive Sundays, crystallized New York's nascent minimalist movement and then went back to driving a taxi until the zeitgeist caught up with him and collaborator Robert Wilson a few years later. Since then, Glass has scored with such operas as Satyagraha (his masterpiece) and Akhnaten. But with the Met's imprimatur on The Voyage, Glass's long journey from obscure avant- gardist to mainstream cultural icon has been culminated...
Modern artists aren't so patient. The past decade or so has witnessed operas on such subjects as Mahatma Gandhi (Philip Glass's Satyagraha) and Richard Nixon (John Adams' Nixon in China). The latest example is Malcolm Little, known best as the black-power firebrand Malcolm X, who was gunned down in New York City 27 years ago. Spike Lee's already controversial film Malcolm X is due to open next month, but before there was Lee there was composer Anthony Davis and his powerful, chilling opera X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, first produced in Philadelphia...
...case, the real test of a movement is not how long it lasts but what it leaves behind. The Glass trilogy, especially its masterpiece Satyagraha, will survive in memory and repertoire. As heard on successive nights at Stuttgart, it is an overwhelming experience, a kind of modern Ring cycle whose components make their effect both individually and collectively...
Each of the three operas, brilliantly staged by German director and designer Achim Freyer, offers a penetrating portrait of a man whose life changed the ways in which humanity looks at the world: Einstein, the scientist and amateur musician; Gandhi, the inspirational political leader (Satyagraha was the term for his nonviolent resistance movement); and Akhnaten, the putatively monotheistic Pharaoh. Each work is linked musically as well, with motifs from Einstein popping up in the later operas...