New York, NY (April 2, 2008)— Following its hit run in London last spring, Philip Glass’s landmark opera, Satyagraha, will premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on April 11 at 8:00 p.m. in a new production that has won raves from critics and audiences. Satyagraha (Sanskrit for “truth-force”) is a musical meditation on Gandhi’s early years in South Africa, when he developed his philosophy of non-violence. This seminal work, composed in 1979, has been re-imagined by director Phelim McDermott and associate director/set designer Julian Crouch; this co-production of the Met and English National Opera (ENO) has been created in collaboration with Improbable, McDermott and Crouch’s acclaimed London-based theater company. The Times of London praised the production as “a masterwork of theatrical intensity and integrity.” The libretto, by Glass and Constance DeJong, is taken from the Bhagavad Gita, and the opera is performed in Sanksrit. The text is projected onto the stage for this production and the seatback Met Titles system is not used.
“I was determined to bring this modern masterpiece to the Met,” said Met General Manager Peter Gelb. “I’m very pleased that what I believe to be Philip Glass’s greatest opera is having its long-awaited premiere on our stage.”
In conjunction with the Met performances, a series of events and exhibitions inspired by Satyagraha and Gandhi’s message of non-violent protest are taking place throughout the city, including two visual art exhibitions at Lincoln Center and a provocative outdoor transit campaign.
In their role debuts, tenor Richard Croft portrays Gandhi, with Rachelle Durkin, Earle Patriarco, and Alfred Walker in other leading roles. Conductor Dante Anzolini also makes his Met debut, leading all seven performances through Tuesday, May 1. Lighting designer Paule Constable and costume designer Kevin Pollard join McDermott and Crouch in making Met debuts.
When the production of Satyagraha premiered in London last year, many performances sold out, and the show became ENO’s best-selling contemporary work in more than 20 years. The Guardian praised it as “an astonishingly beautiful work...Phelim McDermott’s staging, undertaken in collaboration with the theatre company Improbable, is also a thing of wonder.” Best known to U.S. audiences as the creative force behind the hit Off-Broadway “junk opera” Shockheaded Peter, McDermott and Crouch have conceived a beautiful and striking production that features improvisational puppetry by the twelve-person Skills Ensemble and projections created by the British film and media production company Fifty Nine Productions. The staging also incorporates corrugated metal, used in the colonial structures often seen in photographs of Gandhi’s campaign, and newspaper, which reflects Gandhi’s pioneering use of the media to communicate his message.
Satyagraha is the second opera in Philip Glass’s famous “portrait” trilogy, which also includes Einstein on the Beach (1975) and Akhnaten (1983-84). Satyagraha is based on Mohandas K. Gandhi’s formative years as a young lawyer in South Africa, when he developed his philosophy of non-violent protest as a force for change. The opera had its world premiere in 1980 at the Netherlands Opera. The opera’s Met premiere this month coincides with the anniversaries of Gandhi’s Salt March on Dandi, Gujarat on April 6, 1930, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, widely recognized as a disciple of Gandhi, on April 4, 1968. “Gandhi was a great man who thought the power of truth could change the world…I can identify with that idea,” Glass says. “By the late 1970s, I thought that the political and social landscape had become so violent and that it was really time to think about the man who invented the idea of social change and non-violence. Little did I know that 30 years later, it would be far more violent. I don’t know what the power of art has to do in the world. Yet, when I talk to people about this piece, it seems to have had a strong meaning for them.” This is the second Glass opera produced by the Met; The Voyage, based on Christopher Columbus’s journey to America, was commissioned by the Met and had its world premiere here in 1992.
The Met’s new production of Satyagraha is underwritten by Agnes Varis, a Met managing director who also sponsored an outdoor advertising campaign for Satyagraha that launched this month. The campaign, featuring four bold, provocative questions (such as “Could an opera make us warriors for peace?”) superimposed over an image of Gandhi, runs for one month on bus shelters and phone kiosks throughout New York City. “I decided to underwrite this production of Satyagraha because of the brilliance of Philip Glass’s music and the message of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.,” said Dr. Varis. “I’ve always been interested in freedom movements, and Gandhi and King were leaders who changed our society.”
Met Exhibitions and Events
The Arnold & Marie Schwartz Gallery Met:
CHUCK CLOSE PHILIP GLASS 40 YEARS
Monday, March 17 through May 2008/Metropolitan Opera
Over the last 40 years, the artist Chuck Close has created more than 100 different studies of Philip Glass, in many different mediums. To honor the decades-long friendship, Gallery Met—the Metropolitan Opera’s exhibition space for contemporary visual art—is presenting CHUCK CLOSE PHILIP GLASS 40 YEARS, a new exhibition that features 18 portraits of Glass created by Close between 1968 and 2008. Organized by Gallery Met Director Dodie Kazanjian, the show includes paintings, photographs, lithographs, tapestries, etchings, and engravings, in mediums ranging from acrylic to watercolor and daguerreotype to stamp pad ink. Gallery visitors will also be able to hear Philip Glass’s Musical Portrait of Chuck Close during the exhibition; the 15-minute piece for solo piano premiered at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall in 2005.
As part of a new visual arts program begun this year by Kazanjian, renowned painter Francesco Clemente has created an original artwork inspired by Satyagraha for a banner currently hanging on the front of the opera house.
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, “The Force of Truth: Glass, Gandhi, and Satyagraha”
Monday, March 17, through Saturday, April 19/Lincoln Center
In collaboration with the Met, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center is presenting an exhibition of Satyagraha production photos and design sketches, historical images, and collages, as well as a Gandhi-inspired mural by artist Tamar Hirschl entitled “Protest.” The exhibition is open to the public and free of charge. Hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm; Monday and Thursday from noon to 8:00 pm; and Saturdays from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm.
Guggenheim Works & Process: Satyagraha
Tuesday, March 25, at 8:00 p.m./The Guggenheim Museum
Philip Glass, Julian Crouch, Phelim McDermott, and Met General Manager Peter Gelb discussed the creative process behind the new production. Glass (accompanying on piano), Richard Croft, and Bradley Garvin (Prince Arjuna) performed musical excerpts, with additional piano accompaniment by Dennis Giauque. This event was sold-out, but video clips will be available in mid-April at www.metopera.org. For more information, please call (212) 423-3587.
Metropolitan Opera Guild: Bringing Satyagraha to Life
Monday, April 14, at 6:00 p.m./Metropolitan Opera House
Philip Glass talks with Met Artistic Assistant Manager Sarah Billinghurst about Satyagraha. For tickets and information, please call (212) 769-7028.
Metropolitan Opera Guild: Philip Glass and India
Tuesday, April 22, at 6:00 p.m./Metropolitan Opera House
Satyagraha draws from the Bhagavad Gita and from the life and writings of Mahatma Gandhi. Dr. W. Anthony Sheppard examines this opera and its source material, and reveals the enduring impact of Indian music on the career of this world-renowned contemporary composer. For tickets and information, please call (212) 769-7028.
Outside the Met
The Satya Graha Forum
On the occasion of the opera’s Met debut, an independent consortium (separate from the Met) of New York cultural, arts, environmental, educational, and spiritual institutions working with Glass, has launched an initiative to create a dialogue on Gandhi’s concept of social change. The Forum, which kicks off on April 6 with a gathering at the Gandhi statue in New York City’s Union Square Park, will present events, lectures, and performances throughout the month of April. For more information, go to www.satya-graha.org
About the composer
Award-winning composer Philip Glass is world renowned for his operas, symphonies, concertos, film scores, and solo works. Glass’s landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, created with Robert Wilson, had its U.S. premiere independently produced at the Met in 1976. He subsequently made Einstein part of a trilogy, resulting in the creation of his operas Satyagraha, which premiered in 1980, and Akhnaten (1983). Glass and Wilson worked on several other projects including the CIVIL warS—Rome (1984), written for the 1984 Olympics; White Raven (1991), commissioned by Portugal to celebrate its history of discovery and premiering at EXPO '98 in Lisbon and at the Lincoln Center Festival in 2001; and Monsters of Grace (1998), a digital 3-D opera. Glass’s other recent opera collaborations include Galileo Galilei (2002), with Mary Zimmerman, and The Sound of a Voice (2003) with David Henry Hwang. Glass’s opera Waiting for the Barbarians, based on the book by John Coetzee, had its premiere at the Erfurt Theater in Germany followed by its United States premiere in January 2007 at Austin Lyric Opera. His opera about the Civil War, Appomattox, commissioned by the San Francisco Opera, premiered there last October. His other operas include: The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 (1986), The Fall of the House of Usher (1988), Hydrogen Jukebox (1990) with a libretto written by Allen Ginsberg and based on his poetry, Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five (1997) with librettos written by Doris Lessing and based on her novels, The Voyage (1992), and an opera trilogy based on the films of Jean Cocteau, Orphée (1993), La Belle et la Bête (1994) and Les Enfants Terribles (1996). Glass’s wide repertoire also includes music for dance, theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra, and film. His film scores for Richard Eyre’s Notes on a Scandal and Martin Scorsese’s Kundun have received Academy Award nominations, while his score for Peter Weir’s The Truman Show won him a Golden Globe. His film score for Stephen Daldry’s The Hours received Golden Globe, Grammy, and Academy Award nominations, and an award in Film Music from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
About the Performers
American tenor Richard Croft makes his role debut as Gandhi in the Met’s production of Satyagraha. He has performed with leading opera companies and orchestras around the world, including the Paris Opera, the Berlin State Opera, Zurich Opera, Glyndebourne Festival, Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. A 1984 Eastern Division winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, Croft has performed several roles at the Met, beginning with his debut in 1991 as Belmonte in Die Entführung aus dem Serail. Additional Met roles include Cassio in Otello, Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni (which he also recently sang at the Seattle Opera) and Ferrando in Così fan tutte (also the role of his Houston Grand Opera and Washington Opera debuts). He recently performed in Haydn’s Armida at the Salzburg Festival and Beethoven’s An die Ferne Geliebte song cycle at the University of North Texas, where he has been Professor of Voice since 2004.
Winner of the 2001 Met National Council Auditions, Rachelle Durkin (Ms. Schlesen) joined the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindeman Young Artists Development Program in 2001 and made her Met debut in 2002 as the First Handmaiden in Sly. She has since performed in several Met productions, including La Cenerentola, Jenůfa, Benvenuto Cellini, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Queen of Spades, L'Italiana in Algeri, and Parsifal.
Baritone Earle Patriarco (Mr. Kallenbach) has appeared with many of the world’s opera companies including San Francisco Opera (where he was an Adler Fellow and a member of the Merola Opera Program), Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Paris Opera, Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels, and several others. Mr. Patriarco debuted at the Met in 1996 as Ping in Turandot and later that season sang Figaro in Il Barbiere di Siviglia. His other roles at the Met include Belcore in L'Elisir d'Amore, Dr. Falke in Die Fledermaus, Marcello and Schaunard in La Bohème, and Taddeo in L'Italiana in Algeri, among others.
American bass-baritone Alfred Walker (Parsi Rustomji) recently performed the role of Allazim in the Peter Sellars’ production of Mozart’s Zaide at the Vienna Festival, London’s Barbican Centre, and Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. A member of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindeman Young Artists Development Program from 1997 to 2000, Walker debuted at the Met in 1998 as Grégorio in Roméo et Juliette. His other Met performances include roles in Samson et Dalila, Pelléas et Mélisande, Les Troyens, and L'Enfant et les Sortilèges.
Argentine conductor Dante Anzolini is currently Music Director of the Orchestra of the Teatro Argentino Opera Theatre, and principal guest conductor of the Linz Theater in Austria. In May 2006, he led the Brucknerorchester of Linz in tour to Dornbirn (Austria) and Stuttgart, and Cologne and Düsseldorf (Germany) in a program including Bruckner Symphony No. 4 (1876) and the European premiere of Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 8. He has recently conducted the Matav Orchestra of Budapest, Hungary, in a program of film music (Bernstein, Gershwin and Rota). He made his debut in Vienna with the Vienna Symphony in September 2007. In September 2005, he led the MIAGI Ensemble of South Africa, in Johannesburg and Cape Town, in a program that featured world music singer Miriam Makeba. In 2002, Anzolini made his French debut in the Opéra du Rhin in Strasbourg. That same year he conducted an acclaimed production of Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Italy, featuring Ute Lemper. As a composer, he has written many piano solo, orchestral, and chamber pieces.
About the production team
Phelim McDermott is an Artistic Director of Improbable, a London theater company founded in 1996, and has been directing and performing since 1984. In 1999, he and Julian Crouch created Shockheaded Peter: A Junk Opera for Off-Broadway at the Little Schubert Theatre. In February 2001, the show opened in London’s West End and won the Olivier Award for Best Entertainment in 2002, among other awards, and was nominated for a South Bank Show Theater Award. McDermott’s Improbable productions include the multiple award-winning 70 Hill Lane, Lifegame, Animo, Coma, Spirit, Sticky, Cinderella, and The Hanging Man. Most recently he directed Theatre of Blood at the National Theatre. He has also directed The Ghost Downstairs at Leicester Haymarket, Dr. Faustus and Improbable Tales (an entirely improvised two-hour play) at Nottingham Playhouse, The Servant of Two Masters, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Government Inspector for West Yorkshire Playhouse, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the English Shakespeare Company in 1996-97. McDermott has also worked as an actor in radio, film, television and theater, including: Too Clever by Half; A Flea in Her Ear; and The Illusion (Old Vic, also assistant director); Robin Hood; Peter Greenaway’s The Baby of Macon; Tomorrow La Scala!; and Home Road Movies (British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award winner). With Julian Crouch, McDermott will design and produce the Metropolitan Opera’s 125th Anniversary Gala in the 2008-09 season. The team is also slated to direct the new Addams Family musical by Andrew Lippa, scheduled to debut on Broadway in 2009-10.
Julian Crouch is a Co-Artistic Director of Improbable, where he has collaborated with Phelim McDermott on Animo, 70 Hill Lane, Lifegame, Coma, Spirit, Sticky, Angela Carter’s Cinderella, and Shockheaded Peter. They also co-directed and designed The Quest for Don Quixote, which received a Best Design Nomination in the London Fringe Awards, and the English Shakespeare Company’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Initially a mask and puppet maker, Crouch toured the world with the Trickster Theatre Company from 1985 to 1986. In the following years, he specialized in site specific design, including 17 productions for Welfare State International. In 2004, Crouch designed the production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for London’s National Theatre. Crouch was the set designer for Jerry Springer–The Opera, which toured venues in the United Kingdom in 2006 and played for two nights at Carnegie Hall in January 2008. He designed the new production by Dominic Cooke of The Magic Flute that opens at the Welsh National Opera in 2008. He is the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in the United Kingdom. Crouch will design the sets for the Met’s new production of composer John Adam’s Doctor Atomic, premiering on October 13, 2008.
Costume designer Kevin Pollard first worked with Julian Crouch and Phelim McDermott on their production of The Government Inspector, which led to a later collaboration on A Midsummer Night's Dream for the English Shakespeare Company and Shockheaded Peter. His work also includes Père Ubu (co-design with Richard Foxton), and Out in the City and Tom Sawyer (co-design with Simon Banam) for Contact Theatre Manchester.
Lighting designer Paule Constable was nominated for a 2007 Tony Award for Best Lighting Design of a Play for her original lighting design for Melly Still’s drama with music, Coram Boy. Her other Broadway lighting credits include revivals of Moon for the Misbegotten (2007), Jumpers (2004), Amadeus (1999), and Conor McPherson’s original play, The Weir, directed by Ian Rickson. Her opera credits include: The Magic Flute and La Traviata at Opera North; The Miserly Knight, Gianni Schicchi, La Bohème, Carmen, and Giulio Cesare at Glyndebourne; Don Giovanni and Káťa Kabanová at Welsh National Opera; and La Clemenza di Tito, Manon, Alcina, Rape of Lucretia, and Tosca at English National Opera, among others. She is the lighting designer for the National Theatre’s production of Waves, which makes its U.S. premiere at Lincoln Center in November 2008. Paule is a member of the British multidisciplinary theater company, Complicite.
Live Broadcasts to be heard around the world
Satyagraha will be experienced by millions of people around the world this season on radio and via streaming on the Internet, through new distribution platforms the Met has established with various media partners.
The network premiere of Satyagraha on the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network Metropolitan is Saturday, April 19 at 1:30 pm. Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS Satellite Radio (Channel 85) will carry live broadcasts of the opening night performance on Friday, April 11 at 8:00 pm, with additional live broadcasts on Monday, April 14 at 8:00 pm, Saturday, April 19 at 1:30 pm, and Tuesday, April 22 at 8:00 pm.
The opening night performance will be streamed live from the Met’s web site, www.metopera.org, via RealNetworks®.
About the Met
Under the leadership of General Manager Peter Gelb and Music Director James Levine, the Met has a series of bold initiatives underway that are designed to broaden its audience and revitalize the company’s repertory. The Met has made a commitment to presenting modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, with highly theatrical productions featuring the greatest opera stars in the world.
The Met’s current 2007-08 season boasts seven new productions, the most new productions the Met has presented in one season in 40 years. The Metropolitan Opera’s 2008-09 season pays tribute to the company’s extraordinary history on the occasion of its 125th anniversary, while also emphasizing the Met’s renewed commitment to advancing the art form. The upcoming season includes six new productions, 18 revivals, the final performances of Otto Schenk’s production of Wagner’s Ring cycle, conducted by Levine, and two gala celebrations.
The company’s groundbreaking commissioning program in partnership with New York’s Lincoln Center Theater (LCT), provides renowned composers and playwrights with the resources to create and develop new works at the Met and at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater. There are currently 12 collaborations in development; the first workshop, for musician and composer Rufus Wainwright’s original opera, is tentatively scheduled for January, 2009. The Met’s partnership with LCT is part of the company’s larger initiative to commission new operas from contemporary composers, present modern masterpieces alongside the classic repertory, and provide a venue for artists to nurture their work. Upcoming seasons include new productions of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic (2008-09), John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (2009-10), and Thomas Adès’s The Tempest (2011-12).
Building on its 76-year-old international radio broadcast history – heard over the Toll Brothers-Metropolitan Opera International Radio Network – the Met now uses advanced media distribution platforms and state-of-the-art technology to attract new audiences and reach millions of opera fans around the world. “The Met: Live in HD,” the company’s series of live performance transmissions, shown in high definition (HD) in movie theaters around the world, expanded from six to eight opera transmissions in 2007-08 and includes distribution in New York City public schools. Global distribution of the series triples this season will reach over 600 participating venues in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. These performances begin airing on PBS in March 2008, and a selection of these HD performances will be available on DVD. The Met’s 2008-09 “The Met: Live in HD” series will expand from eight to ten transmissions and will begin in October 2008. Metropolitan Opera Radio on SIRIUS Satellite Radio (Channel 85) is a subscription-based audio service broadcasting both live and rare historical performances. In addition to providing audio recordings through the new Met on Rhapsody on-demand service, the company also presents free live audio streaming of performances on its website once every week during the opera season with support from RealNetworks®.
The Met has recently launched several audience development initiatives, such as Open House dress rehearsals, the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met, reduced ticket prices—including an immensely popular new rush ticket program, and an annual Holiday Series presentation for families.