Wow! A visual feast by times, but at the end of the day I would have to say thumbs only half-way up (at best) on this interesting production.
In Vancouver we seem fated in our attempts to see this MetOpera production. At the local theatre I normally patronize the transmission failed to materialise last November and we were given tickets to the encore presentation today. But when I arrived at the theatre at 9:45 am I was told the broadcast has started at 9:00 am, despite the tickets saying show time was 10:00 am! So I missed the pre-show interview or whatever may have happened – perhaps an explanation of what we were about to see? I got my money back.
I sat down in the theatre to see a large chorus, with a black man, a white woman and a white man centre stage, with the black man on a soap box. The time appeared to be Edwardian, judging by the woman’s attire. The chorus, naturally comprising many visible ethnicities, was largely dressed in a European fashion except for a few women in Indian costume. What was going on? After a while the white man was on the soapbox and the other two were beside him. About 15 minutes later the Act came to an end and as he walked off it became apparent that the white man represented Gandhi.
My companion and I read the blurb provided by the theatre. Clearly our relatively broad general knowledge of Gandhi and the South Africa of his time would be insufficient to see us through the day. The text, from the Baghavadgita, is sung in Sanskrit and while the subtitles projected the extracts these were only meditations that Gandhi read rather than aids to the progress of the opera – indeed unrelated except at an extremely high spiritual or moral level.
The second Act was interesting to look at, with imaginative use of newspapers to represent the paper Gandhi started and the response from the British masters of the day. I loved the swirling mass of paper towards the end of the Act. The effect of a printing press, with newsprint being strung across the stage, was very good. The costumes of the British (?) population were colorful and fun and reconciled me to the full colour newspapers used in the action behind the singers. I enjoyed the presentation but the slowness of the “action” was starting to wear.
I was moved to wonder whether the concept of blackface might have usefully been employed – despite it’s political incorrectness. When a chorus is made up of people of many colours and races, trying to represent specific races becomes problematical. For instance, the arc of the story attempting to be told refers to the many Indians living in South Africa but there is no reference to the native black people, as far as I could see. So who was the black actor at the end of Act 1 portraying? And who is the long-bearded old man writing away in the upper right of the back wall of the stage?
In Act 3 a thin black actor was helped into what looked like tails but might have been a more modern take on evening dress and mounted a podium. He then spent the next 45 minutes, through to the end of the opera, hectoring in slow motion to a hidden audience in a raised light box at the back of the stage. Who is this supposed to be? Nelson Mandela? Martin Luther King? Perhaps he was not representing a black character at all? The accompanying newsreel footage indicated the 1960′s but the skinniness of the actor did not steer me to anyone in particular.
In some ways I felt the production was wearing the opera. While the stretching of packing tape in multitudinous strings across the stage may have been intended to present the spider’s web of difficulties being faced by the Indian population I found that after a while even the “production” was not enough to keep me interested.
The production and direction was imaginatively created by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch with their UK Skills Ensemble. Richard Croft (Gandhi) has a lovely voice, which in the parts of the opera I saw was hardly called upon. Instead he emoted worry and concern, and walked very, very slowly, for the many hours of the production.
From other reviews I now read that the writer with the beard is Tolstoy (huh??) and the fellow addressing the crowd is indeed MLK.
It appears that I have totally run and missed it with this opera – a fate that might have been avoided had I taken the time to read up on all the background first. Clearly the Met must have felt so, judging by the articles the New York Times ran around the 2008 and 2011 productions. But should an audience be asked to come that well prepared?
I read the reports of Ken Russell’s death in the 
