Could an opera make us warriors for peace?

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Could an opera make us warriors for peace?

Questa discussione ha 28 interventi Ultimo post

Mar, 18/03/2008 - 23:01

m.marchitti

Iscritto dal: 17/08/2000

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Elena Park: Satyagraha is about a visionary leader who believed in
social change through non-violence. Nearly three decades later, you
have written Appomattox, an opera about two iconic leaders of the
Civil War. What do these operas have in common?

Philip Glass: They're both about social change. Interestingly
enough, it's almost like coming back to the theme of Satyagraha.
Those two men–Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee–were men of
tremendous moral stamina and character. They are reflections of
Gandhi. They were able to hold onto things that are the best parts
of human nature.

Elena Park: What do you recall about composing Satyagraha?
Philip Glass: I remember starting at the beginning and running
straight through to the end. When I came to the last note of the
last scene, I was done. I didn't go back, and I did hardly any
rewriting. When I began writing Satyagraha, I had already been going
to India for over 12 years. I knew a lot about Gandhi. I visited the
places he lived, I knew people who knew him. I studied his
autobiographical writings. Within a few years of that period of
study, I was writing about him, so I was very close to the material,
and for that reason I think it was easy to write. This was right
after Einstein on the Beach, which was '76. I had an idea of doing a
piece like thisÑwhich is ironic in a way–because by the late '70s, I
thought that the political and social landscape had become so
violent and that it was really time to think about the man who
invented the idea of social change and non-violence. Little did I
know that 30 years later, it would be far more violent.

Elena Park: You described your approach to writing opera as playful.
How did your background in experimental theater influence you?

Philip Glass: I was interested in rebalancing the elements of opera:
text, movement, image, and music. The scenes [in Satyagraha] were
not arranged in chronological order. If you were looking at a book
of photographs–let's say a family album–you might not look at it in
sequential order. We can view history that way. I created the opera
that way as well. Since we already know the story, we don't really
need to arrange it in a normal sequence. So I took the elements of
theater and rearranged them. I considered them playful; some people
might have considered this sacrilegious. But we're still looking at
these pieces, so they couldn't have been such a bad idea.

Elena Park: How familiar were you with opera and its conventions
when you first started composing in this form?

Philip Glass: When I went to music school, I studied opera. I didn't
think I was going to write any. But when the Met was on 39th Street,
I sat in the student seats for a few dollars, at the very top where
I could have a score desk. That's how I learned about opera, whether
it was Berg or Verdi or whomever. So I wasn't coming to opera
without that knowledge. But I was taking it to a place that was very
different.

Elena Park: What advice did you give to Phelim McDermott and Julian
Crouch as they were creating this new production?

Philip Glass: I said, "Well, look. We did it the way we did it in
1979. But I expect you'll do it differently–you should." I wasn't
interested in advising them. I was more interested in what they
would do. They're brilliant people. I'd seen their theater. I didn't
want to stand in the way of anything that would come to them. This
is an opera that was composed 30 years ago. If it has a future, it
will be because other people, and not my generation, will reinvent
it. If that's truly happening, I should not be part of it.

Elena Park: What does the concept of Satyagraha mean to you now?
Being inspired by social change through non-violence was authentic.
Philip Glass: I can identify with that idea as strongly today as I
did when I wrote the opera. I was in my 40s at that time, so I
wasn't like a kid. But I'm in a very different place now. For one
thing, I've seen the world change in a dramatic and not particularly
good way. We're in a more desperate situation than we were 30 years
ago. I don't know what the power of art has to do in the world.
Sometimes it's hard to see that it has any. And yet when I talk to
people about this piece, it seems to have had a strong meaning for
them... There's a line at the end of Satyagraha, when Krishna
says, "I come into the world a man among men to put virtue on its
feet again." I'm inspired to do opera with this hope.

Lun, 28/03/2011 - 03:43

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Could an opera make us warriors for peace?