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Explosively staggering, Philip Glass’s brilliant exegesis of Mahatma Gandhi’s (1869-1948) flowering as a pacifist, exponent of truth and non-violence is profoundly depicted by the Metropolitan Opera (original, premiered in 1980); Glass infuses “Satyagraha” with a blend of historical impacts on Mahatma’s (“great-souled”) youth, commencing with Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), his philosophy of “Bread Labour”, and the value of “simplicity of life and purity of purpose”; “Bhagavad Gita” (“Song of God”) a Hindu epic dating to the second century BCE preaching the “eternal message of spiritual wisdom”; ultimately “it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live somebody else’s life with perfection; “Lord Krishna” and warrior “Arjuna” musings have affected, instructed, inspired countless generations to live a lifestyle choosing divinity, truth over the pleasant, benign. Colossal, gorgeously, grotesque staging, operatic performances of wonderment lend immaculate poetry to another figurehead motivating Gandhi’s journey: Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), poet, painter, Nobel laureate, taught the potency of a harmonious landscape, leading to one’s “self-enrichment, purification and salvation”; “Satyagraha” soars, liquidating emotional conceits, elucidating the mystical man, worthy of profound reverence.
The innovative third section, Glass’s vision of Gandhi’s legacy, infecting future trailblazers, focusing on Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), dazzlingly staged, with “King’s” back to the viewer, elevated, arms akimbo, rallying unseen crowds to his enlightened vision of a future, where, reminiscent of Gandhi’s goal, achieving rights for all, through nonviolent means; thwarted and assassinated King’s and Gandhi’s dreams remain unrequited.
Eminence manifests itself in many forms; viewing “Satyagraha”, saluting Philip Glass’s miraculous ingenuity, Mahatma Gandhi’s saintly bequeathment; knowing in one’s total being that Opera has the power to transcend life’s vicissitudes, gifting a joy so uplifting, transformative, that living and experiencing its enchantments, its abundance, is sufficient.
FIVE STARS!!!!!
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