Ok, ok, I kid about the title. Yesterday, I watched the Met's broadcast of Satygraha. I walked away with mixed feelings.
I loved the puppets. I'm very interested by puppets and their uses on the operatic stage, and I feel that the puppets in Satyagraha were fantastic. Simple materials like newspaper were used to create elegant, expressive puppets. Also cool? Krishna in a suit (picture from Variety).
The text from Satyagraha was taken from the Bhagavadgita. The opera is sung in Sanskrit, there were few subtitles, and there was no dialogue. Interesting as the first two points are, it is the third which intrigues me most. The action of the opera was taken away from it's usual main vehicle (text) and moved to the music and the emotional expressions of the actors. With a composer such as Phillip Glass, the music was a soundscape, leaving the actors to do all the specific communicating. Not necessarily a bad technique, but I felt like I was working very hard to get to the plot. I could have dealt with this for about an hour, but instead I had over three hours of it. I left feeling worn out.
TL;DR I liked the pretty images, but felt that it was just too long.
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