Glass - Satyagraha, at the Opéra Garnier in Paris

Palais Garnier, Paris, Thursday April 16 2026

Conductor: Ingo Metzmacher. Production and choreography: Bobbi Jene Smith, Christian Friedländer. Sets: Wojciech Dziedzic. Costumes: John Torres. Lighting: Jacob Mallinson Bird. Countertenor: Anthony Roth Costanzo. Soprano: Ilanah Lobel-Torres. Baritone: Davóne Tines. Alto: Adriana Bignagni Lesca. Soprano: Olivia Boen. Mezzo-soprano: Deepa Johnny. Baritone: Amin Ahangaran. Tenor: Nicky Spence. Bass: Nicolas Cavallier. Dancers: Alexander Bozinoff, Lorrin Brubaker, Jeremy Coachman, Jonathan Fredrickson, Marion Gautier de Charnacé, Awa Joannais, Héloïse Jocqueviel, Payton Johnson, Rachel McNamee, Mermoz Melchior, Adrien Ouaki, Ido Toledano. Orchestra and Chorus Of the Opéra National de Paris.

Photos: © Yonathan Kellerman

‘Je n’ai rien compris. Mais c’était sublime’ - I didn’t understand a thing, but it was sublime. So said a friend as we waited for the métro after Satyagraha. Overhearing him, a woman a few yards away looked up from rummaging in her bag and burst out laughing: ‘Same here, she said.’

Although Satyagraha is loosely structured around seven key events in Gandhi’s life, with three acts under the successive ‘patronage’ of Leo Tolstoy, Rabindranath Tagore, and Martin Luther King Jr., the Sanskrit texts used by Philip Glass and Constance DeJong, drawn from the Bhagavad Gita, don’t provide a typical operatic narrative. There’s a structure, and there’s a slow-moving, ruminatory exploration of such (sadly highly topical) themes as violence, peaceful resistance, and truth in politics, but no plot as such.

Coming just six months after the first ever French staging, by Léo Warynski and Lucinda Childs, in Nice, this new one in Paris, by choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith and designer Christian Friedländer, moves further still from traditional storytelling - in the interest, they say, of universality. Smith says, in an interview published on the Paris Opera’s website, that their aim was to ‘dissolve the lines between what is a dance piece, what is a musical piece,’ presenting contemporary people communicating with their contemporaries in the audience, in a ritual crafted around the work’s themes.

The single set, a shabby, bare theatre space, described by many critics as a rehearsal studio, but to my English eye suggesting the kind of drab, colonial function-hall George Formby and Vera Lynn might have performed in for troops during WWII, is basically timeless and placeless. The figures of Tolstoy, Tagore, King and Gandhi himself are literally shelved, observing proceedings from chairs on a yellow-railed gallery to the right, only occasionally, at tenser moments, moving to the rail to get a pained closer look.

Similarly, the names of Gandhi, Krishna, Mrs Alexander, Mrs Naidoo, Arjuna, and so on, are absent from the cast list, replaced simply by ‘Countertenor’, ‘Tenor’, ‘Soprano’... Apart from some British army khaki at the beginning - e.g. Gandhi/countertenor’s oversized uniform, eventually replaced by a simple white shirt and grey trousers - the costumes are (rather puzzlingly, in the context) all quite smart, western, middle class, mid-century mufti. The only props are some tables and chairs, pushed about by the dancers and chorus.

The production is, you might say, more choreographed than directed, turning Satyagraha into a modern manifestation of France’s eighteenth-century opéra-ballet. Instead of a storyline-type narrative, soloists, chorus and dancers are all wound up together in a hypnotically slow-moving ‘double’ progression: the Gandhi/countertenor’s, from armed violence (he is forced, in the first act, to execute Nicky Spence’s tenor) to non-violent satyāgraha, in parallel with the bodhisattva’s, to nirvana - or so I understand: I know no more about Indian religions than I do about dance, making the writing of this post especially perilous.

The stately movement, whether massed or individual, comes in waves, patiently surging forward, then ebbing, over and over, in time to the score. The choreography (influenced, so many have written, by Pina Bausch; not something I’d know) is vigorous, athletic, repetitive, and I should think exhausting. The dancers thrust forward together in wedge formation, or are pitted one-on-one in individual struggles: violent insistence, peaceful resistance.

The demands on singers and chorus are, naturally less extreme, with one singular, spectacular exception: in the second act, as Gandhi/countertenor is beaten up, Anthony Roth Costanzo is tossed around, shaken and (air-) slapped like a rag doll by dancers in dark-read great-coats, before, Pied-Piper-like, leading the women of the chorus in a mesmerising round dance, two steps forward, one back, during ‘Indian Opinion’. The building itself participates in the experience: at the start of the final act, it remains in darkness except for Chagall’s ceiling, picked out in soft, bluish light, while the invisible chorus sings angelically from the rafters.

There’s nothing, of course, in Glass's score like ‘Zweite Brautnacht!’ or ‘Ella giammai m'amò’ to weigh up, and no ‘sherbet arias’ dutifully allotting to each soloist their five minutes of fame. But dancers and singers alike threw themselves determinedly into the concept; and more than just well-rehearsed commitment, of which we saw plenty from beginning to end, there was actually a lot of charisma on stage.

Lead dancer Jonathan Fredrickson, a Texan whose CV includes time with the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, projected it forcefully. All the young dancers did, really: it was like seeing a grouping of star soloists dancing together, each with his or her individual personality, rather than ‘just’ a regular troupe.

Among the singers, imposing US bass-baritone Davóne Tines, new to me but apparently quite a multi-faceted performer, was equally charismatic, exhibiting a powerful dramatic and vocal personality. With his softer timbre, Tehran native Amin Ahangaran made less obvious impact. Tenor Nicky Spence has, as we witnessed in his Loge in Das Rheingold in Brussels or The Exterminating Angel in Paris, charisma in spades, but gets too little to do, in the Glass, to show it off. The same can be said of bass Nicolas Cavallier: what we heard was very nicely done, but there wasn’t a great deal for him to sing, notwithstanding his handsomely floppy-haired presence.

Most obviously charismatic of the women - very much so - in what would usually be the ‘Mrs. Alexander’ role, was tall, elegant Adriana Bignagni Lesca, here listed as ‘alto’, with a deep, dark, chocolatey grain. The women’s ensembles, shared with Olivia Boen and Deepa Johnny, were particularly fine, especially when soprano Ilanah Lobel-Torres - the ‘suitably sweet-singing Waldvogel,’ as I put it, in Paris’s recent Siegfried - topped them with her soaring, silvery descant.

But the most fascinatingly charismatic performer on stage was Anthony Roth Costanzo. I say ‘fascinatingly’ because, really, you wonder ‘how so?’ This diminutive chap, though, when not being tossed around and beaten up, required to do little other than stand still, arms dangling, mouth slightly open, or pace very, very slowly around the stage, nevertheless seems in command, as if he’d flown in first-class from Philadelphia simply to take over, in their entirety, the house, the troupe and the production. No wonder the women of the chorus follow him in his Pied-Piper round. Who wouldn’t?

I’ve read, in several articles, that recasting the role (with Glass's approval: he was present on the opening night) for a countertenor was a mistake, putting a strain on his upper range, or his lower one, or both, but I didn’t hear any of that. I wondered, rather, how it was he managed to project so well into Garnier when singing so daringly quietly, ending the evening, a single, magnetic figure, alone under a spotlight.

How choruses contrive even to stay together as they navigate this kind of writing is also a mystery to me, especially when invited, as in this production, to join in the dancing and look as if they are enjoying it. They did an impressive job. The orchestra, meanwhile, under Ingo Metzmacher, played with near-romantic warmth and lyricism, emphasising how different this score is from its predecessor, Einstein, composed only a couple of years before. When Anthony Roth Costanzo led Metzmacher out, the audience rose to its feet, not something we see every day in Paris.

So, to sum up. Yes, the production concept did make the work relatively abstract and obscure. And there was a bit too much cautious, snail's-pace walking, or just standing gawping, with dangling arms. All that, combined with the single, bare set, allowed some sense of monotony to creep in. The second act, with its stylised violence and the magnificent round dance, was most successful; the third, in which, basically, the singers watched the dancers dance, less so - a kind of petering out. Yet overall, the ritual somehow succeeded, wave after slow-rolling wave, in reaching its destination and making its point. Totally sublime? Maybe not. But still, a very good evening of opera.