Photo: Marty Sohl. Video: Metropolitan Opera.

To memorialize Gandhi in such a way is, ironically, to forget him-- his spirit killed in the act of dramatic revival. How might Gandhi’s legacy truly be respected in the face of a world abounding with injustice? And what, then, might be the best response to the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Glass’s Satyagraha?

For Gandhi, the antidote to an unequal system premised on competition and greed—such as the one currently at large around the globe—was solidarity and active resistance. In his South African newspaper Indian Opinion, Gandhi writes:

No race or community has ever achieved anything without the communal spirit. . . . A chain is no stronger than the weakest link in it, and unless we are prepared to stand and work shoulder to shoulder without flinching and without being daunted by temporary disappointments, failure would be the only fit regard, or rather, punishment.

Today, such rhetoric could easily be heard coming from Occupy Wall Street, which is revitalizing the spirit of resistance in a country which has for decades been steered toward complacency. Like Gandhi, Occupy sees gross wealth disparities as an engine of violence and social unrest, and as an indicator of system which is at its core unjust and unsustainable. Watching Gandhi and his followers face repression and abuse on the stage of the Met, one could imagine Occupy protesters joining the Satyagrahis and supplementing the Sanskrit libretto with their familiar cry, “This is what democracy looks like!”

The affinities between Glass’s Satyagraha and Occupy Wall Street don’t stop there. Indeed, many of Gandhi’s pioneering techniques of civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action which the opera highlights have seen their contemporary realization in the Occupy movement, among other protests worldwide. One of the strongest parallels between Gandhi’s early activism and Occupy is the emphasis on claiming a physical space, within which the seeds of a better society may be planted. Inspired by the writings of Ruskin and Tolstoy, Gandhi procured farmland while inSouth Africa where he and his spiritual disciples built a self-sufficient community dedicated to simple labor and mutual aid.

The setting for Act I Scene 2 of the opera is Tolstoy Farm, where Gandhi and the Satyagrahis work together to sustain a cooperative, autonomous space reminiscent of ZuccottiPark, the original base of the Occupy movement. “The weak became strong on Tolstoy Farm,” wrote Gandhi in his Satyagraha in South Africa, “and labor proved to be a tonic for all.” The same may have been said about Zuccotti, where participatory structures of horizontal governance fostered a similar environment of empowerment and self-managed work.

Cleo Carol Knopf, a professional aerialist and active participant in the Occupy protests, elaborated on these connections after attending the final performance of Satyagraha. In the scene on Tolstoy’s Farm, she said, “we see Tolstoy in an elevated space off to one side and the people on the farm below. His elevated space indicates that he is not just a person, but an idea.” That idea is further developed in Act III, where Martin Luther King assumes a similar elevated posture. “The figure of MLK does not move from one spot and there is a vast expanse around him. He gestures but does not move, for if he took one step he would fall,” Cleo said. “This evokes the idea of occupying space and standing one’s ground. We must not step off our space of power nor deviate one step from the truth in order to win.”

King and Tolstoy were two of the three historical figures Glass chose to frame each act, the third being the poet Rabindranath Tagore, a contemporary of Gandhi. “For the three witnesses,” Glass writes in Music, “I searched for characters who represented for Gandhi what, in India, is known as the ‘three times’—past, present and future.” Each of the three ‘witnesses’ is silent for the duration of their respective acts, suspended above the particular action surrounding Gandhi.

Their temporal designations emphasize the timelessness and boundless applicability of Gandhi’s principles. Glass sought further to universalize the work’s content in his use of an unfamiliar language for the libretto and minimal subtitles, so that the “listener could let the words go altogether.” By increasing the distance between the audience and a predefined text, Glass writes, “the weight of ‘meaning’ would then be thrown onto the music, the designs and the stage action.’”

Though Glass’s emphasis on the universal and symbolic aspects of the principles of ‘Satyagraha’ may inhibit the specifics of Gandhi’s radical message from coming through, those same aspects lend the opera to open-ended interpretation. “I expected,” Glass writes, “that the audience would further personalize the work. Whatever interpretations they brought to it, and how it became meaningful to them, was really not predictable by me.”

On December 1st around 10:00 p.m., toward the end of the last performance of Glass’s Satyagraha, a crowd of protesters began to assemble at the steps of Lincoln Center Plaza. Within a half-hour, hundreds flooded the sidewalk on Columbus Ave between 63rd and 64th street, talk of Gandhi in the air. Occupy Museums, an action group affiliated with Occupy Wall Street, had organized a demonstration around Glass’s opera, given its highly relevant subject of nonviolent resistance. How could an opera about Gandhi be let to pass without a protest?

For the members of Occupy Museums, the Satyagraha protest was the active extension of a serious reading of the opera’s content given the conditions of its performance at Lincoln Center. Two weeks earlier, the action group had organized a similar protest outside the Juilliard premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies’ Kommilitonen—also about activism—amidst a disproportionately large police presence.

A couple dozen protesters marched across 65th Street to the foot of Lincoln Center Plaza, outnumbered by their NYPD chaperones. Once on the steps of the empty Plaza, a line of cops andLincolnCenter security officials prevented the protesters from entering and forced them to return to the sidewalk. The message was clear: despite its claims to the contrary, Lincoln Center is not a site of free expression.

Fast-forward a fortnight to the Satyagraha demonstration. Again, Lincoln Center recruited an elaborate police presence to barricade the outskirts of the Plaza, so the normally buzzing platform around the fountain was completely deserted, save a few armed cops, while hundreds of unarmed protesters and interested onlookers swarmed the front sidewalk. Many protesters adorned costumes made from issues of The Occupied Wall Street Journal, Occupy’s newspaper, mimicking the Met’s set-design which prominently featured the Satyagrahi’s newspaper Indian Opinion.

Other symbolic parallels were drawn with the ongoing production within the halls of the Met: a giant Statue of Liberty puppet found its way to the protest—eerily similar to the large puppets used in the production, while several protesters removed their shoes and placed them beneath the police barricades in an expression of humility similar to that performed by the fictional Satyagrahis inside. The spirit of nonviolent civil disobedience found its way to the streets as well. One Occupy protester, David Suker, who is a season ticket-holder at the Met, tried to test police boundaries by walking onto the plaza level while carrying a copy of The Occupied Wall Street Journal. He was immediately arrested.

It says a lot about what ‘culture’ means in this country when its most cherished institutions are guarded more heavily than Wall Street. What could have possibly justified such a display?

Taking advantage of legal technicalities which distinguish between ‘traditional’ and ‘limited’ public spaces, Lincoln Center won a court order in 2002 legitimizing the enforcement of its long-standing policy of prohibiting political demonstrations on the Plaza. By neutralizing this preeminent cultural forum ostensibly dedicated to free creative expression, Lincoln Center effectively certifies the spurious distinction between art and politics and uses it as a weapon to protect its own (high politicized) corporate interests. Thus freedom of movement is guaranteed on the Plaza so long as individuals remain passive consumers or idle spectators, but curtailed the moment they pick up a sign and speak their mind.

The repression of free speech at Lincoln Center is representative of a larger tendency in Americatowards the privatization of all aspects of life, and indicative of an increasingly corporatized culture which privileges personal self-interest and excessive accumulation of private wealth at the expense of most people’s basic human needs. Since Occupy Wall Street began, city-owned property ostensibly set aside precisely for the sake of free public assembly has consistently proven to function as little more than a walkway between shopping centers. If there were any lingering doubts about this before November 15th, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg put them to rest early that morning.

Shortly after1:00 a.m., hundreds of NYPD riot police and counter-terrorism officers effectively shut down access to Lower Manhattanin order to launch a surprise raid on Zuccotti Park. Occupy protesters were either forcibly evicted or arrested, the bulk of their belongings committed to dumpsters. Members of the press were systematically prevented from documenting the raid and the surrounding premises were purged of hundreds of livid protesters who had just arrived to defend their camp. Bloomberg’s ‘personal army’—as the mayor likes to refer to the NYPD— had waged a veritable war against the basic rights of freedom of assembly and won. (The following week, thousands of shoppers camped on the sidewalk outside Macy’s in midtown Manhattan in anticipation of Black Friday sales. Riot police were not called.)

Imagine the irony, then, when just a few days the Met transmitted a live broadcast of Glass’s Satyagraha into movie theaters worldwide, where audiences were treated to an advertisement for the mayor’s multinational news corporation, Bloomberg L.P., which is “proud to be the global corporate sponsor of the Met Opera: Live in HD.” The juxtaposition is stark; while Bloomberg funds the representation of Gandhi’s pioneering tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience in theaters around the world, he simultaneously orders a paramilitary-style raid of the peaceful public occupation of Zuccotti Park, blacking out the media, while protesters are beaten, tear-gassed, and violently arrested.

In a striking parallel in Act 3 of Satyagraha, high above the stage near MLK’s podium, projections of riot police appear on large screens in the form of dark silhouettes whacking Civil Rights protesters in slow motion with nightsticks. Soon the police come to life, and their figures descend to the stage to beat and arrest Gandhi’s fellow Satyagrahis until only the spiritual leader is left standing. The police are represented in the form of unidentified shadows without specific designation and belonging to no particular authority, their anonymous character rendering their brutality universal. They could have easily been members of Bloomberg’s ‘army,’ the Satyagrahis members ofOccupy Wall Street.

Bloomberg’s financial support of Satyagraha only underscored the necessity of an active response to the opera. Just as each of Satyagraha’s three acts features a witness spiritually connected to Gandhi’s principles of nonviolent resistance, Occupy Wall Street became Gandhi’s fourth witness, honoring the spirit of ‘Satyagraha’ by staging Act IV outside the Met Opera House. Given the circumstances, an honest interpretation of the Met’s production would have allowed for nothing less. Gandhi, assuming he wasn’t already sitting in a prison cell onRikersIsland, would certainly have joined the Occupiers behind the barricades in front of Lincoln Center Plaza.

“The highest honor that my friends can do me is to enforce in their own lives the program I stand for or resist me to their utmost if they do not believe in it,” Gandhi writes in Young India. “Blind adoration in the age of action is perfectly valueless, is often embarrassing and equally, often painful.”

In a sanitized setting like Lincoln Center, ‘blind adoration’ of Gandhi’s message is all that is possible. Only by pushing against the illegitimate boundaries between the private and the public, art and politics, could something like Gandhi’s ‘truth-force’ be achieved.

After the curtain closed on the final performance of Satyagraha, Cleo stood up from her seat in the audience and called a ‘mic-check’ to announce the protest which had begun outside. It fell on deaf ears. What did the outside world have to do with this opera about Gandhi, which, within the halls of the corporate opera house, should inspire only internal reflection?

“There was an enormous sense of having broken with theatre decorum by yelling in the opera house,” said Cleo. As the audience exited the theater, they found a deserted Plaza surrounded by police directing them away from the demonstration. Nevertheless, many audience members made their way towards the barricades from within the Plaza, against police orders. The bluff of Lincoln Center’s dedication to free-expression was being called in dramatic fashion, and the operagoers paid attention.

“It is interesting that inside the opera house the people seemed contained with all their thoughts inside of them. But outside they opened up, and you could see the audience members who came out develop a glow on their faces,” said Cleo. “The contrast between the atmosphere inside the opera house, and outside, made me see that there is something vital in giving people a regular forum for free expression rather than all the forums we have in our culture simply for consumption.

“There was a sense that opera was not really finished giving its message until the outside action was expressed.”

As the presence of operagoers swelled from the Plaza-side of the barrier, police attempted in vain to maintain the barricade separating them from the protesters on the sidewalk. Soon enough, the crowd had unified, and everyone—inside and outside the Plaza—was an Occupier. A general assembly had begun, and the human-mic was passed around on both sides of the fence.

Dozens of protesters spoke, offering testimonials of personal struggle, rants about the corporatization of culture, and inspiring commentaries on the legacy of Gandhi. What was most important is that everyone’s voice could be heard, a rare thing in a culture where only the highest salaried voices are empowered.

One speaker, John, who had attended Satyagraha, gave an impassioned plea for the continuation of the opera’s themes of love and truth. He then turned to address the police officers guarding the barricades. “I want to say to my brothers right here / that every time / we lift a hand / against our brothers and sisters / we make a moral choice,” he preached. “We don’t have to do this. / You are my neighbor / I am you / and you are me. / I care about you. / I know you care about me. / We’re going to do this together. / Satyagraha!”

Another speaker took the human-mic from the inside of the Plaza. “I performed tonight / at Lincoln Center,” he yelled. “And I stand with you / in solidarity!” At the end of his speech, he hoisted himself onto the metal barricades, his legs straddling either side. “As a symbol / of my solidarity / I’m going to straddle this barricade / because we are / one!” The crowd then broke into Occupy’s trademark chant, “We are the 99%!”

The central attraction of the assembly was Philip Glass’s own participation. A few days prior, Glass had approached Occupy Wall Street with the help of his colleague and fellow composer, Laurie Anderson. After taking his final bow on the stage of the Met, Glass headed to the steps of Lincoln Center, encouraging members of the audience to join him. Once on the human-mic, Glass delivered the final stirring lines of his opera, an excerpt from the Bhagadvad Gita, this time recited in English so the message was crystal clear.

Anderson and her partner, rock legend Lou Reed, also took a turn on the human-mic, after waiting patiently for nearly an hour. Andersonmade an appeal for inclusion in the Occupy movement, and a mending of sectarian divisions. “This is a movement / for all of us!,” she proclaimed.

Reed was more subdued, his verse laconic, but nevertheless emphatic. “I’ve never been more ashamed / than to see the barricades tonight,” he confessed. “I want to occupy Wall Street. / I support it / in each and every way.”

An oft-cited criticism of the Satyagraha protests was its purported targeting of expensive tickets as the smoking gun for opera’s supposed ‘elitism’ or ‘snobbery.’ The criticism is misplaced. It is true that such sentiments were floated by a couple individuals at the protest’s general assembly—which gave voice to anybody who wanted to speak—but was never a position endorsed byOccupy Wall Street orOccupyMuseums.

Even if opera were free, much of the population would still feel alienated from it and never come. This is sad, and the reasons for it have to do with the aforementioned movement towards total corporatization of culture, and the consequence of having fine art made even more detached from a population increasingly driven toward fashionable consumption. This is ironic, given that art’s corporate sponsors are members of precisely the class whose preferred policies have warped culture in this direction (see: David H. Koch). To return opera to the people (and vice-versa, to return people to the opera), serious political change is necessary. Hence, Occupy.

The movement is still in its nascent stages, and much work is still needed to amass a movement capable of dethroning the existing institutions of power. As Gandhi knew well, politics turns on public opinion, and the success of Occupy will depend greatly on its continued ability to inspire rather than alienate the public. “It is our exclusiveness and the easy self-satisfaction that have certainly kept many a waverer away from us,” Gandhi wrote of his Satyagrahis in 1921. “Our motto must ever be conversion by gentle persuasion and a constant appeal to the head and heart.”

The seeds have been planted for genuine radical change, and the fate of human society depends crucially on the success of a movement inspired by the principles of Gandhi’s ‘truth-force.’ Though mostly symbolic, the demonstration outside Lincoln Center on December 1st revealed the power of a movement dedicated to truth and justice, and to the nonviolent confrontation with the sources of power that divide and embitter the population. For a few hours that night, the artificial divide between public and private had been dissolved, Glass’s opera was released from its corporate shrink wrap, and the commons were reclaimed.

Benjamin Laude is a Juilliard pianist and an organizer with Occupy Museums, an official action group within the Occupy Wall Street movement. In drafting and revising this essay, he received input from members of Occupy Musuems, though the thoughts and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the movement.

Three years later, with unemployment rates still hovering around Depression-era levels, Satyagraha returned to the Met this past November in time for the world premiere of Occupy Wall Street, which just two months before had staged its own production of nonviolent civil disobedience in Lower Manhattan.

Inspired by the Arab Spring and the summertime uprisings in major cities acrossEurope, a small group of activists occupied Zuccotti Park in New York City’s Financial District on September 17th in protest of the gross injustices of the global economic system. Situated just a few blocks from Wall Street, the encampment’s location was both symbolic and strategic: the primary culprits in the infliction of three decades of economic misery were the Wall Street-based multinational financial firms, whose singular dedication to the maximization of private profit has concentrated wealth and power among a short-list of their most esteemed shareholders, ensuring the minimization of equality and democracy among an increasingly debt-burdened and dispossessed populous populace.

With Washington in bed with Wall Street, the only hope for the marginalized majorities was to take matters into their own hands: move in to the neighborhood and begin waging a campaign of nonviolent resistance against the institutions of oppression and domination. Within a few weeks, ‘Occupy’ had exploded and hundreds of similar occupations began cropping up acrossAmericaand the rest of the world.

On December 6^th, a week after closing night, I had the privilege of watching Satyagraha in an encore showing of the Met’s HD broadcast in a theater on the East Side of Manhattan, intent on writing a review for Parterre Box. The film-like presentation allowed those of us in the theater access to many of the opera’s details not available to the fixed perspectives of in-house audience members at the Met, and Glass’s portrayal of Gandhi came through vividly on the big-screen.

Nevertheless, there was something unsettling about the whole experience. How was I to react to a four-hour meditation on Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance in the comfort of a private theater, while real acts of nonviolent resistance were taking place around New York and the rest of the country that same day? In writing a review of the opera, I decided to push the limits of a purely aesthetic interpretation (Part I), before realizing the necessity of an alternative response (Part II). Given the loaded content of the opera, and the conditions of its cordoned-off production amidst a growing popular movement of resistance, only an active political reaction would suffice.

When Philip Glass first conceived of an opera about Gandhi’s activism in the mid ‘70s, Occupy was little more than a twinkle inAmerica’s eye. Globalization was in its incipient stages as the corporate world was scrambling to address falling profits. The manufacturing industry which had formed the crux of the postwar boom had set sail for the Third World, and America’s business shifted to finance. In response to a perceived crisis of insufficient demand and underconsumption, newly empowered financial industries donned their Santa-hats and dropped credit-cards in the stockings of endangered middle-class Americans everywhere. A nation-wide shopping spree soon commenced, and a generation of home-owning, SUV-driving, cable-watching optimists vied to keep its repertoire of electronic gadgets up to speed with a rapidly innovative tech-industry. ‘Terrorism’ and ‘foreclosure’ were not yet household names.

One hundred years earlier, the glimmer and glamour of a post-industrial consumeristAmericacould not have been more foreign to Mohandas Gandhi, who in 1893 arrived in South Africa as a young barrister hired by an Indian law firm in the Colony of Natal, recently having taken a vow of vegetarianism while studying inLondon. Upon witnessing his fellow Indians treated as second-class citizens under British colonial rule and experiencing the humiliation of ethnic discrimination himself, Gandhi expanded the scope of his disciplined moral convictions from the realm of mere self-purification to encompass the broader terrain of social struggle.

Over the next 21 years, Gandhi led a civil rights campaign inSouth Africa, pioneering many of the tactics of nonviolent resistance for which he would become famous. He called his philosophy of active civil disobedience ‘Satyagraha’, a Sanskrit word meaning ‘truth-force.’ The two decades Gandhi spent in South Africa perfecting his method of ‘truth-force’ are the focus of Glass’s opera.

For those audience members looking for a narrative retelling of Gandhi’s time in South Africa, Satyagraha has little to offer. The three-act opera, totaling nearly four hours in length (including two intermissions), eschews the typical linear plot structure in favor of a more spatial, collage-like sequence of extended meditations around select events from Gandhi’s early life.

In his 1987 autobiography Music, Glass writes that “the difficulty for me of using short scenes was that my music tends to have a greater emotional impact when it is allowed a longer sweep of time in which to develop.” Elongated phases of repeating melodic fragments were more conducive to a symbolic portrait of Gandhi, whose spirit could gradually unravel before the audience’s eyes. For Glass, watching the opera “would be more like looking at a family photo album, viewing pictures taken over a span of years. The order in which you saw them might not even matter; it wouldn’t prevent you from forming a picture of the family growing up, growing old together.”

In its recent revival of Satyagraha, which first premiered by the Netherlands Opera in Rotterdam in 1980, the Met marshaled its extensive resources to build a production in the service of Glass’s vision. Like Gandhi, whose principles of modesty and simplicity led to larger-than-life status, the set of Satyagraha utilized such unassuming materials as newspaper, Scotch tape, and corrugated iron to spectacular effect.

The opening scene depicts the mythical battlefield of the Bhagavad Gita (Gita, for short), from which the libretto was drawn by Glass and playwright Constance DeJong. At the beginning of the opera, Gandhi is joined with the two principle characters from the Gita, Prince Arjuna and a Krishna, enshrouded in a radiant blue glow. The three perform a trio in which Gandhi has the last word, singing from the text of the Gita: Hold pleasure and pain, profit and loss, victory and defeat to be the same: then brace yourself for the fight. So will you bring no evil on yourself.

Having been exposed to the ancient Sanskrit text as a young man, Gandhi would adopt the core principles of the Gita throughout his life, often tailoring its themes of self-renunciation and personal transcendence to fit his unique circumstances. Glass cleverly depicts the persistent influence of the Gita on Gandhi by substituting its passages for dialogue otherwise appropriate to the action of a given scene.

For example, in Act I Scene 3, Gandhi and his followers receive news that the British Government has enacted a racist amendment profiling individuals of Indian descent in South Africa. Rather than sing about their specific efforts to resist this so-called ‘Black Act,’ Gandhi and his fellow Satyagrahis instead sing from the Gita: These works of sacrifice must be done. From old did the Lord of creatures say that in sacrifice you sustain the gods and the gods sustain you in return.

The resistance vows are kept in Act II Scene 3, when, after the British Government refuses to repeal the Black Act, the Satyagrahis join with Gandhi in the collective burning of their registration cards. In the Met’s production, they toss their cards one-by-one into a cauldron, each time igniting a controlled flame around its circular rim until a halo of fire stood at center stage, all the while singing from the Gita’s lofty verse above Glass’s transfixing repetitive structures. It is an uncommonly powerful spectacle.

Scenes such as this reveal the uniquely high demands Satyagraha places on its singers, particularly the chorus. Challenging operatic casting conventions, the work functions almost like a staged oratorio, given its scriptural text and its heavy use of choral material. Chorus master Donald Palumbo and conductor Dante Anzolini had their work cut out for them in the preparation process, though the most challenging parts belonged to the individual chorus members and soloists, who had to commit their roles entirely to memory.

Given the lack of obvious structural markers in the repetitive landscape of Glass’s music, entrances had to be thoroughly internalized by the cast. Moreover, the Sanskrit libretto poses a major language barrier for singers more comfortable with Italian, French, and German. At the HD broadcast, the chorus showed what intense preparation can achieve, performing admirably in spite of these significant technical obstacles. Their collective voice juxtaposed neatly with the singular lines of Gandhi, reincarnated by Richard Croft, who delivered a sublime (if somewhat hefty) portrayal of the ‘Great Soul’ (‘Mahatma’).

Perhaps Croft’s most memorable moment of the opera came in its final Act, though the word ‘moment’ is somewhat misleading here. Act III consists of only one scene, an extended ‘moment’ of protest stretching an upwards of 45 minutes. The scene depicts Gandhi and his Satyagrahis joining striking miners inNew Castlein 1913 for a thirty-six-mile march in protest of immigration laws and taxes specifically targeting indentured Indian laborers.

The march proceeds at a snail’s pace, so mind-bogglingly slow that neither the music nor the drama seems to be subject to temporal constraints. The act of protest is literally suspended in time, ever-present for eternity, as if to plead for the perennial necessity of nonviolent resistance in the struggle for truth and justice. Social change does not happen after one or two protests, but as the result of a patient and enduring movement, a piece of Gandhian wisdom which reveals itself throughout the gradual unfolding of the final act.

During the slowmo demonstration, several long rolls of Scotch tape are stretched across the length of the stage at various heights, creating a Cat’s Cradle-like array through which the protestors traverse. The web of tape is at once a barrier and a passageway. The opera culminates in the web’s undoing, relinquishing the artificial boundaries which divide humanity.

To underscore the universal applicability of Gandhi’s principle of ‘Satyagraha’, an unidentified dark figure appears upstage during the unfolding of the final act, his back turned to the audience. At some point it becomes clear that the man in question is Martin Luther King. Having climbed up to a ready-made altar suspended high against the backdrop, the Civil Rights leader begins to gesture charismatically, but at such an imperceptibly slow pace as to preempt any hint of demagoguery. His audience is a limitless overcast sky, expressing the boundlessness of his message. Throughout the unfolding of the protest, King doesn’t sing a word, remaining a silent silhouette suspended above theNew Castlemarch, representing Gandhi’s spiritual shadow projected into the future.

The seemingly interminable scene is accompanied by a series of repeating scales in the orchestra covering several octaves in register, reinforcing even more the static nature of the action on stage. But watching the final scene is not like watching grass grow. While anticipation is lost, an eternal present is found, at peace with itself. The timelessness of the Gita’s themes finds its symbolic expression in the suspended dimensions of the scene itself, as Croft ambulates around the stage repeating a breathtaking ascending scale as if it were caught in an infinite loop of perpetual reiteration.

Director Phelim McDermott and set-designer Julian Crouch, not to mention Glass himself, deserve praise for achieving such a rare and appropriate symbolic effect with only the conventional resources of an opera company (albeit one of the most well-endowed).

Despite the hypnotic beauty of Glass’s music and the rich symbolism achieved by the entire production, there is nevertheless something contradictory about the idea of Satyagraha as a theatrical event. The problem lies in the very idea of representing Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolent civil disobedience through a staged medium for a collection of spectators functioning as the passive receptacles of the work’s ‘message.’

Perhaps Glass’s opera might have inspired one or two individual audience members at the Met to fully adopt the principles of ‘Satyagraha’ in their own lives, but more likely they experienced the opera by way of disinterested appreciation and detached contemplation, leaving Gandhi and his staunchly anti-consumerist philosophy reduced to an object of conspicuous consumption.

This is not a criticism of Glass’s opera itself, but rather the conditions of its production. The Met, as is true of most prestigious cultural institutions in theUnited States, is able to exist due to the charitable contributions of a wealthy class of individuals and corporations for whom the arts offer a kind of refuge from the messy world of material affairs.

For most concertgoers as well, the purity of aesthetic experience is a welcome relief from the mundane and alienating conditions of ‘everyday life.’ Such a romantic conception of the function of art is built into the very institutional network which produces and sustains it, and has the effect of systematically stripping artworks of their potential critical capacities.

Preeminent cultural sites like Lincoln Center, which houses the Met, thus present themselves as apolitical spaces where artworks may serve as vehicles of transcendent experience, going beyond the depressing world of economic and political affairs to allow for the harmless rumination on ultimate questions of truth and beauty.

But a fundamental contradiction lies at the bottom of the pretense of neutrality and disinterested artistic experience. The very institutions which have actively contributed to the world’s recent political and economic turmoil are precisely those that fund these ostensibly free and neutral cultural institutions dedicated to escaping that world. The refuge of fine art—despite its apolitical ambitions—proves loaded with ideological baggage, inevitably compromising the aesthetic experiences taking place within.

Insert an opera about Gandhi and the contradictions multiply. In his journal Young India in 1924, Gandhi’s made an appeal for radical social change which would find him demonized by the mainstream media outlets today. He writes that the “mad rush for wealth must cease, and the laborer must be assured not only of a living wage but of a daily task that is not a mere drudgery.”

Considering the untold millions who are unemployed or living below the poverty line in theUnited States alone, where corporate executives are simultaneously receiving pay-raises of unprecedented proportions, Gandhi’s words offer a stinging criticism of the fundamental foundations of our social system. “The saving of labor of the individual should be the object and the honest humanitarian consideration, and not greed the motive,” he writes. “Replace greed by love and everything will come right.”

‘Greed,’ of course, is a quality regularly scrutinized in popular culture. But mainstream outlets tend to target specific individuals and never the foundations of the mainstream itself. The implication is clear: solving the financial crisis will involve little more than the simple task of removing the few remaining Bernie Madoffs left in the system. Once these bad apples are gone, so it goes, the economy will thrive once again.

Gandhi knew better than to locate societal ills in the personal greed of a few individuals. “The fault is not of men,” he writes, “but of the system”—a system premised on severe economic inequality, a phenomenon he saw as ultimately responsibility for state violence. “A non-violent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions persists,” he continues. There must be a “voluntary abdication of riches and the power that riches give, and a sharing of them for the common good.”

Considering the strength and moral force of Gandhi’s words, there is little doubt that he delivered his message with the intent of inspiring committed political action in his readers. Yet the heavily figurative, dramatized operatic medium tends to invite contemplative aesthetic reactions from its spectators, Gandhi’s radicalism easily purged in the process. In an increasingly corporatized society fractured by unprecedented income inequality, what is left of Gandhi’s revolutionary message when delivered on a stage brought to you by Bank of America but a cheap slogan suitable for a refrigerator magnet?

Part II of this review will follow tomorrow.

Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera.

It was the nineteenth-century opera equivalent of the “tired businessman” show. Moreover, it was selected as the first opera to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera onOctober 22, 1883(that’s the “Old Met,” if you’re keeping score); and it became so endemic there that by 1897, the waggish critic William J. Henderson dubbed the Met “Das Faustspielhaus.” Although Faust has hardly fallen out of the repertoire altogether, its performances always feel more like revivals than the returns of a classic.

I must confess that I have always felt a deficiency of sympathy and even perhaps of interest in Faust—Marlowe’s or Goethe’s, it hardly matters. The Faust of legend and play is an old pedant who longs either for more knowledge or more experience, depending on your reading, who, it seems, takes an inordinately long time to notice that everyone else is having more fun.

Barbier and Carré carefully excised every trace of intellectual distinction from Goethe’s drama, and the result was perfectly suited to Gounod’s facile style. Their Faust is a cad without any curiosity beyond what is under the heroine’s skirts—he seems, after all that learning, to be the guy who, if he had it to do all over again, would definitely nail that hot chick in Accounting. Their Mephistopheles—who is supposed to be, if not perhaps the supreme Devil, a high-ranking member of the infernal cabinet, is hardly more than a card-shark, parlor magician, and pimp.

Marguerite must be considered seriously for the position of opera’s stupidest heroine, although she faces stern competition from Donizetti’s Lucia and Meyerbeer’s Dinorah (“Stupidity is the real key-note of Marguerite’s character”—this, from one of the role’s greatest exponents in the 19th century, Clara Louise Kellogg).

Let us not deny Gounod his skill, and his way with a melody—but the work is essentially an operetta in a sour mood, complete with idiot hero and ingenue, and a rake for comedy effect. Gounod learned a great deal from Weber and Meyerbeer and even Beethoven, and then made a molehill out of their mountains; at his best, he sounds like mid-period Verdi at his laziest.

You recognize, almost against your will, half-a-dozen tunes and themes that have entered the cultural memory, and have been quoted, distorted, and parodied so many times that we have forgotten that they were once worshipfully received as components of—yes—Queen Victoria’s favorite opera.

Des McAnuff’s controversial production, in this HD relay, relocates the opening action to c. 1945. During the overture, Faust (a not very much aged Jonas Kauffman) hobbles slowly through a crowd of grotesques, presumably victims of nuclear fallout. We are in a large scientific office/laboratory; Marina Poplavskaya turns up, silent, as a lab tech.– apparently that chick moved up from Accounting. Faust is a nuclear scientist, somewhere between von Braun and Oppenheimer, surrounded, early on, by the chorus in lab coats. Deep, huh?

McAnuff seems happily unaware that the A-Bomb is just as clichéd and superficial a gesture toward the discussion of evil as Nazism now—it’s just that nuclear warfare is “our” evil, while Nazism somehow remains the evil of the other.”

Speaking of evil, Rene Pape turns up as Mephisto in a fine white suit and Panama hat, looking a bit like George Raft. Rather than restoring Faust’s youth and whisking him off to a new place, this devil apparently moves him back in time, to something like World War I—the first of McAnuff’s decisions that defy sense. Surely, Faust regrets his lack of action, rather than his actions —how is bonking a village girl going to assuage genocidal guilt, exactly? At any rate, Marguerite’s village couldn’t be happier about global conflict; so happy are they that they launch a giant soldier puppet cavorting around the stage (I didn’t get it either).

Michelle Losier, whose lovely mezzo was somewhat lost in the unrewarding role of Siebel, was apparently dressed by the designer of Newsies. Marguerite is, in any production, the kind of girl who simultaneously doesn’t know how babies are made, and is totally impressed by diamonds (Bernstein’s Cunegonde, at least, knows what she is about; her cynicism and hypocrisy are part of her charm). I did not mind the French-bourgeois look of the villagers’ costumes, but drab 1915 made an odd match for the 1985-style water cooler that dominated center stage for much of the action, and was the location of Mephistopheles’ wine-making parlor trick. Where are we, Mr McAnuff? 1910, 1985, 1945, 1530?

For the bulk of the action, Faust proceeded business-as-usual; it is very hard to re-flavor the Gounod-Barbier-Carre religio-erotic treacle. McAnuff made a brave try, with the sudden appearance of a second giant puppet, this one representing the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, at the close of the fourth act—but the curtain spared us from dwelling on that absurdity. The ballet was cut down to a brief mime by those lab assistants shielding their eyes from, you guessed, a Los Alamos-style blast (deep, huh?).

The McAnuff frame returned in force at the end of the opera, and showed his confusion and discomfort. Marguerite’s soul is spared, but in this production clambered bodily up a large steel staircase at the back, while the chorus—back in the lab coats of the overture—assured us of her salvation. How the agents of the nuclear Faust’s destruction of the world—his lab assistants—can be understood as celestial voices, Heaven only knows. Methinks McAnuff faintly remembered that angels wear white too, and thought it would be cool if they could be equated with scientists. It might be cool, if it made any sense.

The action closed with Faust’s completion of the suicide he threatened in Act I—it was all, apparently, like St. Elsewhere, a dream. McAnuff seems to share the simplistic disapproval of many “creative types” for science, and mixes that with an equal and equally typical disapproval of revealed religion. The sticky, false theology that Gounod and his librettists shared with much of the 19th century lies at the heart of the opera’s old success and more dicey recent fortunes—but you can’t just ignore it for three hours and then put a lab coat around it.

There were a few modestly interesting touches—we were treated (I use the word advisedly) to enormous rear-screen projections of Poplavskaya between acts, looking either wistful or doleful; and, during the quartet, more techno-magic made giant roses bloom in rear-projection, and then, a la Mary Zimmerman at her artsy-craftiest, large fabric roses rose from the stage to the fly-space.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin gave Gounod’s score an energy and focus that made you wish you were hearing Berlioz. As Marguerite, Poplavskaya exhibited her usual troubles. She can’t decide where to focus her sound—straight out the top of my head? The “mask”? The teeth? The chin? The balcony? As a result, her performance was exciting in the wrong way—suspenseful. We never know what we are about to hear—will it be pseudo-Bumbry now? Or pseudo-Dessay? As Faust, Kauffman—arguably the world’s leading tenor now—was fine, if understandably baffled by his character and the production. He is not a French stylist, and does not really execute a ligne de chant, but it is harder to think of a more intelligent or conscientious singer going. As Mephistopheles, Pape was commanding, but did little to diminish the cheap-comedy elements of the character.

Russell Braun was quite competent as Valentin, Marguerite’s brother, who in the absence of a father figure, acts as the dull enforcer of the status quo. The production’s Marthe, who has a key role to play in the aforementioned quartet, was shockingly uncredited—there is no sign of Wendy White’s name in any publicity.

The Met’s HD relay version included an interview with Kauffman, in which he deftly spoke of his intellectual investment in the role, without once mentioning the director or the production, as well as an interview with Pape, which had even less content than the role he played. Hostess Joyce DiDonato also spoke to Danielle de Niese, David Daniels, and Jeremy Sams, who went a long way toward making The Enchanted Island seem in prospect like something more than musical mashed potatoes.

McAnuff’s production suggests very strongly that, where Faust is concerned, you can’t go home again. After Tristan and Pelléas and Peter Grimes—not to mention Busoni’s Faust—it’s too hard to embrace this soufflé as living art; either we must give it up, or take it on the terms of its own times, prurience, piety, and all. McAnuff’s production, which seems to glance enviously in the direction of Adams’ Doctor Atomic is neither gleefully old nor truly new.

Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera.

To take on the nerd stuff first: in general the tech now is pretty close to transparent. The projected image is clean and detailed, with a strong sense of light and shadow; textures of fabrics in particular I thought came across very clearly, without the super-sharp focus that tends to make everyone, even 19-year-old starlets with airbrushed makeup, look haggard. The sound is clear, though it is obviously mixed as a broadcast and not as a theater acoustic: voices are extremely present and the bigger instruments turned a bit strident as (I would assume) they overloaded the individual microphones worn by the singers. The orchestra was more plausible sounding, somewhere in the middle distance, and there was very little stage noise besides the banging and thumping that naturally accompany the beating of Masetto, for example.  I was particularly impressed at how the engineers managed to minimize the rumble of falling chairs during Donna Anna’s great act 1 recitativo accompagnato.

There were glitches and my sense was that they were somewhat worse than par for the course. For the first half of act 1, the sound would drop out for an instant every five minutes or so, though eventually that resolved. Worse was a signal loss during the finale ultimo, just at the point when Don Ottavio and Donna Anna sing their little “reconciliation” duettino. I took a bathroom break before leaving and then heard music as I re-entered the lobby, so I was able to return to the auditorium for the final moments of the opera. It seems like there should be some way for the local operator to skip back in the stream and show the missing moments, but at any rate it wasn’t a deal-breaking glitch.

That I was still interested to see that notoriously anticlimactic epilogue is a tribute to Carsen’s production. It may not have opened any new doors in Don Giovanni interpretation, but the fairly familiar theme of metatheater as manipulation was presented with flair, a lot of humor, and a visual restraint that is both chic in itself and self-effacing in throwing the focus onto the performers. Big-personality singers like Anna Netrebko and Barbara Frittoli positively bloom when styled in little black dresses and sleek coiffures. In fact, they closely resembled Anouk Aimée and Yvonne Furneaux in one of the all time greatest “style” films, La Dolce Vita.

What sets Carsen above a lot of other directors immersed in pop culture, though, is that he uses these elements not as ends in themselves. In other words, he doesn’t fall into the trap a hack director might do, and present Don Giovanni as a sort of rehash of La Dolce Vita. For example, La Netrebko is the only one here wearing sunglasses, nd even that modernist cliche is rationalized by the dramatic situation: she is attending a funeral for her father.

Where Carsen doesn’t quite pull the conceit off is where most performances of Don Giovanni come to a crashing halt, i.e., between Zerlina’s second aria and the graveyard scene. This big lull in the second act is, I think, da Ponte’s fault: he ran out of story and so the plot marks time for necessary (and beautiful) music movements. Carsen’s solution was in part to indicate “it’s just an opera, after all,” with the sextet flailing away in conventional gestures, lit by footlights, as Don Giovanni and Elvira’s maid enjoy the private performance. That left the two grand arias, of course, and there Carsen didn’t seem to have such rigorous ideas.

The finale ultimo (what we saw of it) seemed a bit half-baked too. Making Don Giovanni’s death a mirror image of the Commendatore’s felt a little too neat to me, and from the time the old man drew his sword it was all too obvious where the scene was going. That that the “death” was just another manipulative performance by the Don was a good idea, but I think its irony might have landed better if the death scene we just saw had been more conventional, the “standard” demise with flames and such.

The singers were all on a high level without any example of absolute brilliance. I was awed by Netrebko’s ferocious attack on “Or sai chi l’onore” and I love the sheer velvet of Peter Mattei‘s baritone, especially how he can suggest vehemence though emphasis of diction without pushing his lyric instrument into anything like an ugly sound. Frittoli and Giuseppe Filianoti in a way are similar performers in that they transcend non-stellar vocal material with dramatic intensity and superb musicality. That said, her voice is in poorish condition generally these days and his more generally good, though in Ottavio’s music he sounded tight, as if on the fence whether to sing out or to fabricate a “genuine” Mozart sound. (I wish he’d sing out.)  Štefan Kocán (Masetto) is an artist that bears watching, and not just because he’s so pretty!

The biggest letdown was Daniel Barenboim‘s conducting, which doesn’t belong in any opera house, let alone La Scala. After a slow, erratic and noisy performance, the maestro took the Maria Ewing coward’s way out in his curtain call, appearing onstage not alone but with the orchestra. Anyone that worried about being booed needs to find another place to work.

Rodelinda itself has a rather unusual history. It was Handel’s third hit in a row for the Academy of Music at Haymarket in 1725; following Giulio Cesare and Tamerlano; it was arguably the best thing he ever did for that company. He blurred and dampened the achievement in his 1731 revival by importing bits from other operas—but let that pass, let that pass. Rodelinda marks the initial point of the 20th-century Handel revival; produced in 1920 at Gottingen, and again in the United States in 1931. Despite several notable productions in our era, beginning with the 1959 Handel Opera Society’s staging in 1959 with Joan Sutherland, the Metropolitan Opera did not get around to it until 2004, and it is a revival of that production, which they staged at the urging of Fleming herself, that we see now.

Rodelinda was one of the roles Handel created for the flexible, expressive, and ugly superstar, Francesca Cuzzoni. At 52, Fleming is fairer far than Cuzzoni was at 25, and doubtless a better and more responsible singing actress. Although the accuracy of her passagework will never satisfy the purist, it was a relief to hear that, as evidenced by the very first aria (“Ho perduto”), Fleming has found her trill again, and she is as lithe and convincing a stage presence as the Met has now.

As Grimoaldo, the usurper with a conscience, one of the first major tenor roles Handel wrote, Joseph Kaiser acquitted himself very well, and made a striking stage presence, although it is possible to hear the creep of a wobble in the sound that may trouble him later; Blythe was dramatically handsome in carriage and vocal delivery as Eduige. Shenyang, as the unrepenting villain Garibaldo, sang well enough, but fell flat as a stage presence; he was surrounded by singers who gave dimension to their parts, but his portrayal was almost cartoonish in its simplicity.

And then, there were the countertenors—in this revival, Andreas Scholl and Iestyn Davies. Countertenors were never Handel’s choice—if a castrato were not available, he preferred women en travesti or recasting for the tenor range; and, truth to tell, he seems to have had little patience for the castrato voice, temperament, or fan-culture. Given, however, that we are not about to create new castrati, and blithely dropping an entire role down an octave is not an entirely satisfactory solution either, there has arisen a new breed of countertenor, ready to take on the challenges once given to opera’s geldings.

Bertarido was one of the great Senesino roles, and it can be argued that Handel gave him, as befitted his star status, all the best tunes—“Dove sei,” which perhaps rivals “Ombra mai fu” in beauty, is only the first of many beauties; Handel gave the trusty Unulfo, first played by Andrea Pacini, a succession of sparkling and difficult arias. There is some question about the suitability of the countertenor voice to the cavernous Met spaces—hence, no doubt, the Met’s reluctance to invest heavily in the Baroque, which relies so much on male characters in the treble registers—and, no matter how deftly Scholl and Davies work, they are, in effect, singing falsetto, and there will always be a heft lacking.

Nevertheless, Scholl was an effective and affecting Bertarido, albeit  a tad underpowered; Davies, in contrast, had enough squillo to make his arias seem louder than they perhaps were.  A salute should be given to ten-year-old Moritz Linn in the silent role of Flavio—he was wonderfully striking and expressive, despite the impossible task of emoting without a word to say or sing.

The plot is based, quite loosely, on the unpromising theme of 7th –century north Italian history, and it was just as well that no effort was expended to recreate the Dark Ages.Wadsworth’s conception gives us a kind of tempered 1725—hair and apparel that “feel” period, without quite being accurate to the button. Gone are the cypress groves of Haym’s libretto; instead, we see a chastened and peeling grand 18th-century house, with its reception rooms, stables, gardens, library, and, of course, dungeon.  Wadsworthand Lynch took every advantage of the Met’s resources to suggest an almost infinitely wide and deep royal demesne, albeit one of decayed grandeur.

The great downfall of this sort of opera seria is that is consists, in effect , one aria after another , a phenomenon that makes Rodelinda and Bertarido’s duet, “Io t’abbracio,” almost inadvertently moving (and the closing refrain of the opera, for five actual voices, makes you feel faint!), but Wadsworth understood how to vary and deepen the movements of the characters to propel a (for the period) remarkably human and touching story. Even more, perhaps, than in his staging of Gluck’s Iphigenie en Tauride, he elevated an 18th century work to something well beyond the staged concert. We can only hope that Jeremy Sams and Phelim McDermott do as well with Enchanted Island.

Rodelinda is a piece that thrives and perhaps even benefits from HD broadcast; for the very reason that it, like most Baroque operas, was originally offered in much smaller houses, the close attention of the camera parallels 18th-century audience experience. There were–to answer recent parterrian questions–without doubt little microphones stashed here and there in the wigs, but, so far as one could tell, only to secure HD audio transmission.

HD, like Peter Gelb, favors the toothsome, but while it certainly reminded us how attractive Fleming is, even a large creature like Blythe looked good. The intermissions, hosted rather a bit stiffly by Deborah Voigt, featured the fatuities that are already the stock-in-trade of the HD broadcasts (Standard Question One: “What makes this role so difficult?” Standard Answer One: “Well, I just want to give it my best shot, and God willing, we’ll win the pennant this year.” No, that’s Bull Durham; sorry! All the directors and conductors are The. Best. Ever! also–got that?)  The novelty this time around was watching the stage crew wheel the immense set pieces in, around, and out, like a game of what used to be called Chinese Checkers (now to be called Our Overlords’ Game).

Rufus Wainwright, who performed with Fleming on Elvis Costello‘s television program ‘Spectacle,’ was more than a little excited when she turned up at one of his shows.

“‘I feel like I’m in Alice in Wonderland and I better be good for the Queen,” he remarked…

[Top40 Charts/ Shore Fire Media]

Since then the production has been revived several times with galaxy of international mezzo-sopranos such as Jennifer Larmore, Sonia Ganassi, Olga Borodina and, just this past season, superstar Elina Garanca.

The Latvian mezzo-soprano has achieved a dizzying ascent to the highest echelons of operatic stardom in only a few years. She possesses all the ingredients the modern operatic world considers necessary to reach the A list: a pleasant voice, an even more pleasant stage presence, and a photogenic quality for glamorous CD covers. (An exclusive contract with a major recording company is arguably the single most important component).

Although Ms. Garanca introduced herself to the Met audience with Rosina and Cenerentola, I would not consider her a belcanto specialist. In general her coloratura is more than acceptable; however, my distinct feeling is that this repertoire is not like a second skin to her. She lacks the nonchalance and insouciance that a true belcantista wields when tackling those interminable florid musical figures.

The skill of true belcanto specialists is to make the audience believe they are doing acrobatics in mid air without a protective net. Obviously, they do have a net, their ironclad technique, but the audience is supposed to be sitting on the edge of their seats, mouths open in awe and suspense. In Miss Garanca’s approach to pyrotechnics I detect a certain sense of caution that slightly detracts from the feeling of utter elation one should experience at the end of such a tour-de-force as Angelina’s rondò.

My exacting standards are allowed only because we live in an age rich with true Rossini specialists. Not too long ago a performance like Ms. Garanca’s would have been considered flawless.

Overall, Ms. Garanca is an impressive Cenerentola, and even by today’s high standards her performance can ultimately be qualified as a success. Her voice is velvety and mellifluous. She sings tastefully and knows how to shape a phrase, with lovely portamentos and messe di voce, with an even, equalized production throughout her range.

Finally, she is breathtakingly beautiful. She is in fact perhaps too beautiful and regal as the rag-wearing Cenerentola, so that when she later appears in a magnificent evening gown, the contrast is not so striking and dramatic and as it should be.

Ms. Garanca is one of those magnetic artists who automatically galvanizes the audience’s attention, even more so on an HD video, which captures her stunning features, innate elegance and captivating smile in vivid detail. She is not the most humble and unostentatious Cenerentola I have seen; her supermodel looks may have something to do with that.

Her Prince Charming, on the contrary, does not cut a very romantic figure. As much as I would like to ignore it, there is no denying that tenor Lawrence Brownlee’s appeal is severely limited by a less than dashing physical appearance. His somewhat ungainly acting, confined to a few stock gestures, does not help.

His voice, one the other hand, is far from rigid and wooden. To say it plainly, Mr. Brownlee is a first class vocalist. He knows how to sing “sul fiato” producing a homogeneous sound from top to bottom, with no hint of the nasality that often characterizes this type of tenors. His high register is rich with overtones, full of squillo, his bottom sonorous and well supported.

His rendition of “Sì, ritrovarla io giuro” is illustrative of his skills; he is at ease both in the high parts, such as the cabaletta “Dolce speranza” with its exposed high Cs, as well as in the mid section, the Andantino “Pegno adorato e caro”, which, in contrast, lies quite low. Mr. Brownlee is, in a few words, a full lyric tenor gifted with a very wide range and a masterful command of coloratura.

Alessandro Corbelli, perhaps the leading Dandini of the ‘80s and ‘90s, is now singing Don Magnifico with the experience of a long career spent tackling much more virtuosistic roles. Unlike many buffos, he actually sings his part with a real, rich voice; he never speaks or barks his notes. The Italian baritone completely masters the art of rapid-fire patter, of which Rossini arguably wrote the most arduous example with the aria “Sia qualunque delle figlie”.

The role of Dandini is in my view the most difficult to cast. It requires either a buffo able to cope with very flowery singing, or a virtuoso with comic skills, and it’s no easy task to find both qualities, in exactly the same measures, in the same artist. And so, normally, opera companies tend to hire a buffo who will somehow survive all the agility. This Dandini, Simone Alberghini, seems to belong in the latter category. Although he is extremely effective on stage, Mr. Alberghini, whose voice is on the dry side to begin with, tends to aspirate, flatten or slide over the coloratura, and this does not work for me.

Neither am I enthusiastic about John Relyea. The Canadian bass’s instrument has noticeably deteriorated since the first time I heard him in this opera a decade ago, now sounding metallic and unwieldy. Alidoro’s role is virtually limited to one single but major aria; “Là del ciel nell’arcano profondo” is essentially an opera seria aria, with huge intervals, tricky high notes and intricate ornate writing, to which only belcanto masters of the caliber of Samuel Ramey or Michele Pertusi can do full justice.

The roles of the two stepsisters are thankless, with a lot of stage time and no chances to shine. Rachelle Durkin (Clorinda) and Patricia Risley, repeating their roles from the previous revival, are a comically smooth and well tried team. I would prefer a less acidulous sound from Clorinda, who, like Elvira in L’italiana in Algeri and Berta in Il barbiere di Siviglia, is the dominating and most exposed female voice in the ensembles.

Maurizio Benini is a brilliant conductor. In his hands, the famous overture is both a delicate lacework of rarefied and nuanced sounds, and a game of vivid and bright reflections; the famous crescendos are achieved without accelerating tempos, a regrettably all too common trick. He has impeccable timing and draws a musically accurate, polished yet zestful, bubbly performance.

The production by Cesare Lievi, with sets and costumes by Maurizio Balò, was first unveiled in 1997 to mixed reviews. As it is by now a familiar production, I will not dwell on it too long. Personally I like Lievi’s conglomeration of Magritte and Lewis Carroll allusions and do not completely agree with those who find it marred by excessive busyness. Yes, it’s hectic, but after all it is an opera buffa. I do agree that recurring to elements like cracked mirrors, three legged sofas, peeling wallpaper as symbol of moral decline are (and were in 1997) already a bit too bromidic.

As it is clearly noted on the DVD back cover, this production was made possible by Alberto Vilar, who has just made headlines one more time for being sentenced to nine years in prison for wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering.

I find no fault in Gary Halvorson’s DVD direction. As usual, he seems to know the score in detail and has an acute sense of what to highlight. There is nothing distracting in this direction, and this is more than sufficient for me. The only minor flaw I noticed was to show the wedding cake from above, revealing the steps and thus spoiling the effect of the two protagonists climbing on top of it.

Thomas Hampson is the host of the performance. Except for a brief introduction, his interviews with the artists are included in the DVD’s extras. The most interesting information comes from Ms. Garanca, who reveals her intention to drop La Cenerentola from her repertoire very soon and dedicate herself to less acrobatic, more dramatic roles. She does not say it here, but in other interviews she has declared that her biggest goal is to sing… Amneris.

The raison d‘être of this particular showcase is undoubtedly the most polarizing contemporary opera singer, and whether you love her or hate her, a new Metropolitan Opera DVD of Thaïs is likely to reinforce your opinion

Acclaimed tenor/baritone/conductor/Live in HD host Plácido Domingo sets the scene on the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Massenet’s Thaïs in his pre-show introduction. After sharing that he’d love to sing the male lead but can’t because it’s a baritone role (this was filmed in 2008, pre-Simon Boccanegra; perhaps now he’ll give it a shot), he gravely intones: “And now, Renée Fleming in… Thaïs.”

An endless scene and a half transpires before the above-the-title lady in question finally makes her grand — and stunningly gowned — entrance, but to be sure when she does finally appear everyone onstage screams “Thaïs!” just in case we might have otherwise missed her. Fleming is not an exact physical fit for the role; her blond, dimpled good looks are more suggestive of a regional beauty queen (Miss Indiana? Pennsylvania, perhaps?) than the impossibly gorgeous and exotic lust object the libretto is constantly reminding us Thaïs is.

But her singing is mostly strong and accurate — and, for the most part, refreshingly free of the bad habits that earned her the nickname La Scoopenda. The bulk of the role lies in a comfortable soprano mid-range that suits her voice, and she handles many of the higher notes with grace and musicality. Her interpretation of “Dis-moi que je suis belle” at the beginning of Act 2 is a particularly moving and well-sung performance sure to please her fans. She only resorts to screaming at the very end of act 3, where Massenet wrote a repeated phrase escalating to high D (finally settling to a pianissmo high A) that could confound almost any soprano without a superhuman instrument. Even then she hits the correct pitches with at least fifty percent accuracy.

As for acting, the character of Thaïs is so ridiculous – a wanton prostitute (excuse me, “disciple of Venus”) so successful at her trade that the entire community riots when she decides to give it up and join a convent – that the production and Fleming settle for creating a series of Diva Moments rather than trying to make the character seem real.

She mounts a ramp just to sing a single high C, then skitters back down to give Athanael the least romantic kiss seen at the Met since Karita Mattila licked the head of John the Baptist! She caps an aria by hugging herself and beaming adorably as the Met audience showers her with applause! She throws herself on a bed and laughs hysterically — then her laughter turns abruptly to weeping! She cackles; she burns incense; she waves her arms over her head!

Fleming’s musicality is strong enough to transcend this nonsense, but she does seem to have a gay old time playing a singing Theda Bara. However, those perpetual dramatic indulgences are a cinch to make the production more appealing for devotees of camp.

Thomas Hampson sings the role of Athanaël, which offers roughly equal stage time to the soprano part but far less musical or dramatic interest. Athanaël is a bit of a Norman Maine/Stedman Graham role – even when Thaïs is not onstage, he’s always going on about her -- but Hampson sings it beautifully, though perhaps his Athanaël would be more compelling if his singing reflected more of the character’s emotional turmoil. His acting skills are much more problematic, especially in close-up. His dramatic interpretation is limited to two emotions: tormented (this involves brow-furrowing) and boyishly gleeful (“Look, ma, I’m singing!”). Neither facial expression offers much insight into Athanaël’s tortured attempts to reconcile his love of Jesus with his lust for Thaïs.

Concertmaster David Chan offers the musical highlight of the DVD with a brilliant interpretation of the famous violin “Meditation” between the scenes of Act Two. The composition is undoubtedly the most beautiful melody in the opera -- Massenet liked it so much he repeated it almost non-stop for the third act as well -- and Chan gives an emotional performance that traces Thaïs’s difficult journey from the empty glamour of sin to the simplicity of saintly living. The Meditation is the one moment in the entire opera with true emotional resonance; it’s impossible not to be disappointed when it ends and the curtain rises on yet another closeup of Tom Hampson’s scowl.

John Cox’s physical production is a potpourri of Art Deco and period elements – dreadlocks for Athanaël and his fellow monks, Roaring Twenties costumes for Thaïs’s decadent circle of friends. The sets are mostly spare desert scenes or under-furnished interiors with the exception of the palace set in Act 2, a disaster in gold plate (even the palm tree sparkles!) that suggests Brighton Beach more than the banks of the Nile. The Christian Lacroix gowns for Thaïs are the one visually stunning element of the production; even the robe she wears to walk across the desert until her feet bleed is a stylishly draped off-the-shoulder number. Jesus López-Cobos (“my countryman,” Domingo helpfully reminds us in the introduction) conducts a dignified, nuanced reading of the score by the typically excellent Met orchestra.

The only special feature is a compilation of the intermission interviews that aired during the original HD broadcast. We are granted the opportunity to hear Domingo repeatedly pronounce Massenet as though it rhymed with “bassinet,” learn a bit about the costumes, and discover that Fleming is particularly fond of Thaïs’s Act 2 aria because it addresses the uncomfortable but eternal truth that “youth fades.” The (sadistic?) director chooses a tight close-up of the star for this interview, but it must be said that whatever you think about Renée Fleming in Thaïs, the diva looks good.

2. The “chasing” format is a good idea that deserves to be emulated. As La Cieca understands it, the webcast began an hour after the start of the actual performance, then omitted most of the intermissions, finishing with the performance more or less in real time. The savings in resources and to the audience: nearly an hour of filler.

3. In general, the filming was done using simple camera angles and fairly sedate cross-cutting. This format put more emphasis on the performers’ movement (or, in the case of the remarkable Jonas Kaufmann, stillness) and even on a small computer screen offered some sense of being in the same theater as the performance. (The shots from the flies, as if from the POV of the Citizen Kane stagehands, were an exception to this tendency, and La Cieca thinks also that we don’t need to see into the wings as performers prepare to make their entrances. What if Kaufmann needed to hawk up a loogie just prior to taking the stage? Not that anyone so dreamy would ordinarily do such a thing, but La Cieca thinks it’s nice for artists to have options.)

All three of these observations, La Cieca thinks, could apply to the Met’s already very successful video program. In particular, the thrilling experience of a live transmission of an opening night performance (already beamed into the Plaza and Times Square) would be redoubled by making it available via a webcast, adding hundreds of thousands of viewers to the already high-profile event. (This and other live events shared via webcast could, it seems to me, be served through the MetPlayer technology, since obviously a buck has to be made here.)

Furthermore, the Met might consider “chasing” the Saturday afternoon HDs (beginning the movie experience at 2:00 pm instead of the usual 1:00), which would have the added benefit of minimizing those inane backstage interviews.

As for the minimalist camera work, La Cieca has her doubts whether such a thing is the cards for the Met, invested as they are in razzle-dazzle. But it would be lovely if, eventually, there were offered the choice of a less frenetic edit of a telecast for those of us who prefer to see the singers’ and stage director’s vision of the work, not the film director’s.

• Find a radio station
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For those of you who have the budding energy and vigor to engage in the quicksilver thrust and parry of real-time chat, your doyenne suggests you visit La Casa della Cieca.

• The vocal score
• The libretto

Not only did Reporter Bryan Miller leave mid-broadcast out of sheer boredom, but she reviewed it anyway – and admits it in her piece!

Cher public, be glad your trustworthy reviewers here at parterre.com would never never let you down like that.

Such grievances were aired at the expense of the composer’s chef d’oeuvre Carmen yesterday at La Scala’s Gala opening, viewed dal vivo at Symphony Space on 95th and Broadway.

The new production was the first of La Scala’s annual high definition broadcasts and a glimpse into the white-tie and red-carpet opener that takes place every December 7th at the storied Milan opera house. While mostly a snooze, this Carmen is retrofitted in spots to address “thorny contemporary issues,” flattening Bizet’s lyric masterpiece into an activist rant.

Directed and with costumes by avant-garde theater artist Emma Dante, the production is in other respects typical of more conservative Carmens. Her high-concept directing was obviously watered down in rehearsals to be more palatable to a worldwide live audience, lacking many “heretical” elements previously reported in the Italian press, such as Carmen being portrayed as a nun in a convent.

It is unfair to discuss what ideas did not, finally, become a part of Ms. Dante’s staging, much as it would be unfair to judge a novel by its discarded sentences. But the hype swelling around this production’s shocking elements, many not evidenced in the premiere, smacks suspiciously of a public relations-driven succes de scandale.

Ms. Dante’s costumes were only shocking in their ordinariness, with women in cliché gypsy dresses, and the men in dirty military outfits and linen shirts. The sets – stark, dusty, and minimal impressions of Seville – were by Richard Peduzzi, who designed the flop Tosca to open the Metropolitan Opera season in October.

Like the Met Tosca, this Carmen takes few theatrical risks but fails miserably where it does venture out. During Escamillo’s “Toreador Song,” onlookers swoon to his bravado while his companions unfurl enormous, grisly photographs of savagely slaughtered bulls lying in their own blood, like a PETA advertisement. A rhetoric of Feminist clichés also pervades. After the fight between Carmen and Manuela (“C’est Carmencita qui porta les premiers coups!”), in which Ms. Dante’s  girls of the chorus engage in a highly stylized hair-pulling catfight, one of the brawlers (female) is brutally beaten back by a police officer (male) and kicked repeatedly (brutal) even though she is lying motionless (excessive) and bleeding from the mouth (disgusting and brutal). You get the point.

Erwin Schrott: "I'd rather go nude than sing Carmen!"

A few clever and innovative touches interpolated symbolist currents into the stage drama. In Act One, young boys hiding on the backs of adult soldiers fall out of the men’s coats, running amok in their underwear before scampering off – perhaps to suggest the innocent souls of young men lost to war.  Children “double” Carmen herself, who has several young girls at her heels through much of the first act.

In the danced scenes, including the spectacular “Danse Boheme,” Carmen and her entourage move in the familiar flamenco way. Holding their skirts and sweeping them at the floor, they also go to pains to lift them and expose what’s beneath. In one scene they lie back onto tables while Carmen splays each girl’s legs open. Why exactly? To show us a glimpse of the Patriarchy’s loathed and cherished bounty? As a symbol of female strength? The gesture reads crudely and its possible explanations smack only of clichés.

Then there is the controversial decision (which had tongues wagging when leaked from rehearsals last week) that in the final scene Carmen would not only be killed by Don Jose but raped as well. We see crazed Don José forcing a listless Carmen against brick walls, while the offstage chorus cheers Escamillo with shouts of “Victoire!”  To me, this addition only makes explicit those ugly forces within Don José that we already acknowledge – a disappointingly literal extrapolation. What is the difference between Don José, in a murderous rage, raping Carmen before killing her, or knifing her to death straightaway?

As an artistic work, Carmen’s story is rich – and durable – because it is ambiguous. Is she a victim or a villain? Does she intentionally court her own demise, seducing men to madness, or is she a tragic captive of men’s urges? And what does all this say about femininity, and those women who are not, strictly speaking, femmes fatales? To militantly take sides on these issues is foolish and unrewarding, and it gratuitously politicizes a work that already cogently addresses these topics.

Fortunately Dante made few unreasonable demands on her cast, allowing them to present a musically stable opening night performance. Georgian mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili sang the role of Carmen with a creamy, unctuous tone, sounding much older than her 25 years. Though her acting needs work, and her French was quite bad, the real trouble was the consistently loud and hefty singing that made her somewhat unbelievable as a coy seductress.

Jonas Kaufmann scored the biggest success of the evening as Don José, winning huge ovations – the only mid-act applause of the night – after his aria “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée.”  The La Scala audience was generally reserved and tepid all night, greeting his Act One duet with Micaela and her later aria “Je dis que rien” with stony silence.

Kaufmann’s haunting and focused tenor is best in its ringing upper register, which never lacks for depth or warmth in spite of its bright plangency. His mezza voce has an unusual tension that can be captivating, but grows tiresome when the covered, darkened sound is applied to all occasions. In this Carmen, which is lacking in specific Personenregie, the singers are mostly left to their own devices. Kaufmann proved to be the most natural actor among them.

Much of the supporting cast was just so so, but Mathias Hausmann should earn some special mention for his particularly bad Moralès, singing with shoddy French and a thin baritone that reflected shamefully on La Scala’s casting administrators. The powerful, dark bass of Erwin Schrott helped cut a profile of a commanding bullfighter Escamillo, but his French, too, was off the mark – or was he singing Russian? (Poor French was the rule for this performance, though it was performed ambitiously in the original opéra comique version, with extensive French dialogue.)

Our true champion of the evening, however, was Adriana Damato, who was cruelly – one might think intentionally – miscast in the role of Micaëla, yet pulled it off. She furthers Ms. Dante’s idea of Micaëla as the literal embodiment (rather than just the messenger) of Don José’s mother. In Act One, looking dowdy, she uses her warbly, dark soprano to suggest a nagging mother. Then during the duet she turns her reversible black cloak into a wedding dress. When a white scrim becomes her veil, she sings the last bars of the duet in a state of Lucia-like stupor, pawing at the bridal veil like a helpless animal.

In Act Three, Ms. Dante has Damato appear with grayed hair. As Micaëla sings of Don José’s dying mother, the chorus members erect a death bed around her with a sheet and a pillow. Right there, she dies. Though it sounds funny to describe, it was, for me, the one true glimpse of a penetrating avant-garde perspective that, had Ms. Dante carried it further, could have made a Carmen at least worthy of its own controversy.

Daniel Barenboim conducted a Furtwänglerian, foursquare reading of Bizet’s music, almost managing to stifle its effervescent magic. His tempo for the Act One duet (“Parle moi de ma mere”) must have been the slowest in history, and the “Habanera” did not swing with the lilt of Barenboim’s beloved tangos. In louder and more energetic passages, he slashed and whipped his arms, throwing angry sforzati at the orchestra, and cranking the crescendos toward some imagined orchestral climax.

The Symphony Space audience was the kind of crowd you might expect on the Upper West Side at noon on a Monday, with many retirees present. They greeted the live broadcast, after some initial technical difficulties, with a curious mixture of enthusiasm and misbehavior. Folks made chitchat during the orchestral preludes. Shushes were countered by shush-shushers. Great laughter greeted all of Daniel Barenboim’s entrances to the orchestra pit. (He’s grown portly in recent years, and had some trouble getting onto his rostrum, making faces that suggested a visit to the proctologist. This was not handled discreetly by the camera directors.) This laughter elicited laughter-shushers and, finally, furious shouts of “Stop laughing! It isn’t funny!” Of course, it was all very funny.

The applause from the Milan audience was warm for Kaufmann and Rachvelishvili, gently graded for the rest of the singing talent, tepid for Barenboim, and at long last, forcibly hostile to director Emma Dante, who clutched Barenboim’s hand and tried to put on a pleasant face. There is a contingent of the audience in most European opera houses that will boo any unconventional production, and this faction is usually small. Last night’s vote of “no” suggested something far more unanimous and is bound to be a lasting topic of discussion: La Scala’s Carmen, a failure of imagination and of art, will die hard.

Condescending to opera lovers across America — and cheating both Bartlett Sher and Squirrel out of the simple joys of partial nudity — the Met has decided to censor the December 19th High Def broadcast of Les Contes d’Hoffmann!

It should be noted that the poitrines in question are already censored — with tasteful little pasties, yet — and so it’s not even whole boobs we’re talking about.

Apparently concerned that this production might be too stimulating to some viewers in the development of their appreciation of the art form, the House of Gelb will, presumably, pan away from the chestical areas of the supernumeraries and dancers in Acts One and Act Three, training cameras instead on— what?— Joseph Calleja‘s drooling, stupefied stare?