Savitri

I did something rather out of the ordinary last weekend and sang in a private performance of this one-act opera by Holst. I have rather mixed feelings about Holst’s music in general; there are delicate pieces such as the Nunc Dimittis or the Ave Maria, and others which rely too much on great clunky bass lines marching down a scale (I’m thinking of the intro to Personent Hodie – which unfortunately was our school carol – or Turn Back O man). I find the latter a wearisome device, but at least it is at least absent from Savitri.

It is a three-hander with a wordless off-stage female chorus (that’s where I came into it), in which the heroine Savitri persuades Death not to take the life of her husband Satyavan. I wasn’t the only person who thought of Gerontius for both subject matter and musical style, and I was particularly reminded of the section near the end when Gerontius hears the voices of his friends back on earth. Savitri’s bargaining with Death also recalled the long scene between Brünnhilde and Wotan in Walküre. In among this there are modal folk-style melodies which Savitri and Satyavan sing to one another.

My prose couldn’t do justice to the catering that accompanied this event. I didn’t really mingle with the guests but one who spoke to me was the widow of someone well-known who died suddenly exactly ten years ago this week. I couldn’t help wondering afterwards how she found the opera, given its subject matter.

I’d heard of the work before, but all too often the name is mispronounced with the stress on the second syllable. Holst set it correctly on the first one.