Satyagraha - Metropolitan Opera / ENO / Improbable - projection design by 59 Productions

Reviews of the 2011 revival

Mahatma Gandhi seems an unlikely operatic hero, but the Met’s production of Philip Glass’ “Satyagraha,” revived on Friday, is a masterpiece of musical and visual art.

NY Post

this is a production that should be seen for the brilliance of the staging...

McDermott and Crouch [...] have created a feast for the eyes. The set is a semi-circular wall that looks like corrugated tin. The stage is filled with grotesque oversize puppets, stilt-walkers and aerialists, and the designers make inventive use of simple materials like newspaper and sticky tape.

Washington Post

The cast — including the Skills Ensemble, whose members variously impersonated the historical figures, manipulated puppets and props, flew aloft and otherwise populated the stage — was clamorously received in curtain calls, as was the production team. Finally, Mr. Glass took the stage, to a hero’s welcome.

New York Times

AbOUT THIS PROJECT

After sell out runs on both sides of the Atlantic, Improbable's breathtaking production of Philip Glass' Satyagraha returns to the Metropolitan Opera.

The production will be broadcast live in HD to cinemas around the world on November 19th.

Please click here to read information and reviews of the original staging of this production at the Coliseum.

Please click here to read information and reviews of the New York production.

Reviews of the 2008 New York revival

"The production is a work of genius that ranges from the very simple to the fantastically ambitious ... A sense of playful fantasy somehow suits the meditative mood of the music and the serious needs of the religious and political subject matter.

"Satyagraha" is not among this season's high-definition broadcasts of Met productions at movie theaters. Someone who knows the ways of the company told me that adding it to the schedule could cost a million dollars.

They should find a million dollars."

LA Times

"Satyagraha” emerges here as a work of nobility, seriousness, even purity."

New York Times

"The Improbable theater company's production of Philip Glass's "Satyagraha," which opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday night, represents the kind of work the Met should be doing. It is an important revival of a major recent piece. It is a significant work of theater. And it provides an all too rare demonstration of the fact that new opera can indeed be a contemporary art....a profound and beautiful work of theater. The final act is a masterpiece of the power of simplicity."

Washington Post

"For this new production, introduced last year at the English National Opera, director Phelim McDermott and designer Julian Crouch fashioned scenes as enigmatic and transcendent as Glass’s music. Portions of Constance DeJong’s libretto, adapted from the Bhagavad Gita, are projected onto a curved wall of corrugated iron that frames the action. Ordinary materials such as newspaper and packing tape are transformed into props, scenery and animated creatures, gracefully manipulated by stilt-walkers and aerialists...the most achingly beautiful presentation the Met has introduced since Anthony Minghella’s Madama Butterfly in 2006."

*****Time Out New York

Read an interview with Philip Glass about the production in Newsweek

"Hypnotic visual and musical magic."

Wall Street Journal

"A transcendent evening of theater and one of the most striking new Met productions of recent years....The production is a constantly unfolding phantasmagoria of surprises."

Variety