Karen Kamensek | Andrew Benson-Wilson : Early Music Reviews +

Philip Glass: Satyagraha
English National Opera, Improbable
Coliseum. 1 February 2018

One of the surprises of the contemporary opera world is that the 2007 ENO premiere of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha broke all box office records, becoming the most popular contemporary work to be performed by ENO. Its uncompromising approach to text and music seems to have appealed to the public, to the extent that it has just opened for its third revival. It follows ENO’s 2016 revival of Akhnaten, the third of a trilogy of operas, of which Satyagraha is the second. It is a difficult work to categorise. It is not a conventional opera, sung throughout in Sanskrit without an understandable libretto, in a sequence of seemingly unrelated tableaux, in random time frames, each with its own musical timbre. Through-composed, it switches from lengthy solos and ensemble pieces to enormous chorus scenes, in this production backed by spectacular visuals. The orchestra only uses strings and woodwind.

ENO Satyagraha Toby Spence ENO Chorus (c) Donald Cooper

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Philip Glass: Akhnaten
English National Opera
The Coliseum. 4 February 2016

What a lot of balls! For those expecting yet another press tirade about an English National Opera production (although very rarely from me), I stress that I use these words absolutely literally. For, in this powerful staging of Philip Glass opera, jugglers were a key part of the staging, courtesy of the Gandini Juggling Company whose director also choreographed the opera. It was directed by Phelim McDermott of Improbable Theatre Company and conducted by Karen Kamensek, an expert on the music of Philip Glass, making an excellent ENO debut.

As the name suggests, Glass’s Akhnaten explores aspects of the story of the historical Egyptian pharaoh, Akhenaten (note the different spelling), Continue reading →