I am posting here some of my favorite parts of Philip Glass’s opera Satyagraha (Sanskrit सत्याग्रह, satyāgraha “insistence on truth,” 1979).

Loosely based on the life of Mahatma Gandhi, the opera comprises the second part of a trilogy of Glass operas including Einstein on the Beach and Akhnaten.

The title refers to Gandhi’s concept of nonviolent resistance to injustice, Satyagraha, and the text, from the Bhagavad Gita, is sung in the original Sanskrit.

I have known the piece, which I admire, since the early 1980s.

— posted by Roger W. Smith

   March 2022