The upcoming live broadcast from the New York City Metropolitan Opera to be screened at the Sydney Empire Theatre Studio Ten on Saturday, November 19, has a strong Cape Breton connection.
Satyagraha was composed by Philip Glass, the most well-known serious music composer of the last thirty years, who does a major part of his writing at his Cape Breton summer residence.
Glass also mentored fiddler Ashley MacIsaac and the two have collaborated in performance many times including a benefit concert in Margaree this past summer.
Satyagraha (from the Sanskrit word for “insistence on truth”) is an opera in three acts, with a libretto by Glass and Constance de Jong, loosely based on the life of Mohandas K. Gandhi. It is the second part of Glass’s Portrait Trilogy of operas about men who changed the world, which also includes Einstein on the Beach and Akhnaten.
The title of the opera refers to Gandhi’s concept of non-violent resistance to injustice, Satyagraha, and the text, from the Bhagavad Gita, is sung in the original Sanskrit, which for this performance will be presented with subtitles.
The Met’s visually extravagant production stars Richard Croft as Gandhi in an opera which the Washington Post calls “a profound and beautiful work of theater.”
Glass is a prolific composer and famed for his collaborations with artists working in almost every conceivable medium. For the mass audience, he is probably best known for his film scores for which he has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score for Kundun, The Hours, and Notes On a Scandal.
The start time for this High Definition broadcast is 1:55pm (the performance, with intermissions is approximately 4 hours 13 minutes). Ticket prices are (not including tax: Adult – $21.95; Golden Age – $18.95; Child – $12.95.
Satyagraha is part of a series of eleven live broadcasts presented by Empire Theatres and the Metropolitan Opera.
