Customer Reviews

Philip Glass : The Voyage: An Opera in Three Acts

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I was at the World Premiere for this opera - my first time to be in the Met Opera House, my first time to be at a Philip Glass premiere, in the first month after I moved to New York City. No better welcome to New York City than the opportunity to see this at the Met AND to see a revival of Einstein on the Beach at BAM a month later.

I have awaited this recording for years - The Voyage is some of Glass' best music for orchestra and voice. It's powerful, lyrical, triumphant, tender, introspective, and gorgeous at various times. The libretto is a artistic and well-done exploration of what "exploration" is, and what drives so many human hearts to wonder "What's over there....?"

While all of Glass' music is worth having, on the scale of "what should the new fan buy first?", I'd put this in the first five of essential Glass compositions to know.

Philip Glass' latest recording "The Voyage" is indeed one of the composers' most brilliant works for the stage. The opera is an oblique portrait of Christopher Columbus and its main theme is not set on him per se but more on discovery itself. Along with writer David Henry Hwang and the expert conducting of Dennis Russel Davies with the Landestheater Linz, "The Voyage" creates a real adventure in both sound and in imagination.

The plot of the opera is best described as a pageant of poetic questions of man's quest of the unknown. The opera's empassioned Prologue features a scientist and chorus posing questions about the universe, the first act is set on an alien spaceship crashing into Earth during the Ice Age, its crew members subsequently exploring their personal callings on the new planet. The second act is set on Columbus' 32nd day at sea. Here with his crew and Queen Isabella (who is only presnt in his thoughts), the composer presents a dreamy reflection of the many hopes and fears of this uncertain voyage at sea. The third act is set in 2092 at the launch of a space shuttle with astronauts seeking out radio signals from a distant planet. The opera ends with Columbus on his deathbed. He again with Queens Isabella share a final aria in which he clearly states his intentions as an explorer.


Musically the work is standard Glass. However though his chugging rythyms and ever present reams of arrepegios are also coupled here with subtle experimentations in harmony, disonance, and irregular timbres. Throughout the opera themes flow in and out of a sort of aural tapestry creating a sense of dramatic tension that is usually not present in Glass' work. As a result "The Voyage" is an unusually rich opera that proves that even Glass can challenge himself to write a work that goes beyond his often mannered style of composition.


From the uneasy rumblings of the Prologue to the gloriously triumphant ending of Act 1 on into the dark elegaic lines that snake throughout most of Act 2 and the often bright comedic moments of Act 3 on into the daunting end of the Epilogue. "The Voyage" is indeed one of Philip Glass' most appealing works to date

For fans of Philip Glass's theater work, THE VOYAGE is long overdue. Glass was only the second composer in the history of the Metropolitan Opera to be commissioned at the time of The Voyage's premiere, which was for the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World.
Rather that fester in the neeless and meaninless debate about Columbus (i.e. he didn't "discover" anything, he brought pain and suffering to the natives, his arrival was a harbinger for many other bad things to come). These issues to not go unnoticed by Glass, as they are often acknowledged in the text by David Henry Hwang, but Glass chose instead to focus on the romantic notion of Columbus's life: "what drives people to leave their homes and safety in order to go out and explore?".
It is this sense of venerating the explorer's spirit that drives the opera. The Prologue is delivered by a Scientist (stephen hawking(another exploer of the universe)) musing about the nature of time and space.
The three Acts of the opera, which sometime allude to events in Columbus's life, take place in three episodes. Act I is science fiction: a tale of explorers of the universe arriving at earth 500 years before Colmbus' Voyage. They crash and their Captain (a woman) has a culture clash with the Natives who carry her away.
Act II has Columbus interacting with Queen Isabella before he sets out on his trip. She promises him riches and the glory of God for the Voyage he is about to take. This is quickly then seen as a memory COlumbus is having on his boat the day before he arrives in the New World.
Act III is 1000 year later, as a rocket ship prepares to launch, dignitaries of the Universe see to the departure. These space travellers come to find remnants of ancient explorations (Act I), and reminisce about it all.
An Epilogue ends the opera, it sees Columbus reproach Isabella for all that he was promised. She calls him out for his lust and greed.

All and all, Glass and Hwang present an interesting and romantic image about love, greed, inspiration, desire, and the "spirit of discovery". The music is fantastic and monumental. Glass truly rose to the occasion in conceiving of the Voyage. It would have been so easy to villify Columbus, or mire the story in the negativity. By choosing the focus on the inner explorer in all of us, an communicating a severe message of love, desire and greed through beautiful music and words, Glass continues to bring new things to the opera house. Bravo.

Philip Glass' The Voyage, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1992, is a grand and truly great opera. It should be in the standard repertoire of every opera theatre in the world, and this recording by OMM, serves it superbly well.

The multi-layered libretto, by David Henry Hwang analyzes the search for knowledge as a basic human need, exceeding limitations, but with a cost to oneself or to others. The prologue with a wheelchair-bound scientist introduces the quest with a graphic description of physical limitations from which the questioning mind seeks liberation. The next four scenes (Acts one to three and an Epilogue) alternate imagery of space travel, where the cost is to oneself, and Columbus' voyage, where the cost was mostly to others.

In the first space travel section, Act I, explorers crash land on earth. The theme of four crystals is introduced which appear to represent components of human society. Three of these are technology or science, arts, and religion or spirituality. The fourth, curiosity or the quest for knowledge is saved for the spaceship commander. In her encounter with cave-dwelling earthlings, a colonial encounter is examined from both sides, as the commander and the earthlings each wonder what the other will want from them and how they will be treated. Each fears they will be overwhelmed by the other.

The second exploration of the space travel theme comprises Act III, which takes place 600 years after Columbus' voyage, 100 years after the opera's premiere. The lineup of world leaders attending the launch may have seemed odd in 1992, but 14 years later it seems prescient. The final scene of act III, after the spaceship launch, is particularly poignant, and demonstrates how superb music can universalize and convey the depth of emotion suggested by the text. In this scene, as the astronauts say farewell to their loved ones, who they know they will never see again, they come to realize and then accept what the quest for knowledge is costing them.

Act II and the Epilogue deal with Columbus' accomplishment and its effects in a more meditative tone. Dialogues between Columbus and an apparition of Queen Isabella account for most of these two sections. In these, Isabella plays the devil to Columbus' Faust, tempting his vanity and later rebuking him for the massive suffering to which it led. But Columbus has the last word. He rejects the notion that pride was his only motivation, affirming the human desire for knowledge to which he clings as he dies, his final voyage.

The score is one of Glass' best, maintaining the dramatic force with shifts of mood and a stunning variety of orchestral colours. One example is the repeated motion of the waves in Act II that intensifies the monotony and frustration of the long voyage before land is finally sighted. The conducting by Dennis Russell Davies brings out the fullest potential, from the crashing climax of Act 1 to the sublime calm that ends the opera. Ruth Bormann as the Commander is particularly outstanding among the fine cast.

No previous exposure to Glass' music is needed to appreciate this accessible operatic masterpiece. But the experience becomes richer with each hearing of the music and each reading of the text.

When this opera premiered in 1992 I made it a point to tape the Met broadcast off the air. Then I waited for a CD. Finally after so many years they recorded it. Shame on the Met for not doing it earlier. So, although I can't really compare it with the original (Troyanas since passed away) it was a very welcome recording and, being a Glass fan, I have enjoyed it greatly.

I never understood why this opera was not given a recording much earlier. In any event, here it is, almost 15 years later, and the wait has been worth it. The recording is generally of excellent quality. The orchestra sounds lush, and the vocals are strong, over all.

I agree with the reviewer who said this is not Glass's best opera, but I would rank it somewhere near the top. If you like Akhnaten, you will likely enjoy The Voyage. In fact, I am tempted to say that The Voyage is like a cross between the musical style of Akhnaten and La Belle Et La Bete (and other works from roughly that same mid-90s period, like the score to The Secret Agent film).

The choral and rhythmic experimentation present in The Voyage is hypnotic at times. Haunting and never dull, it's a must have for any Glass fan.

Although not Glass's greatest opera (that title remains with 'Akhnaten' or 'Satyagraha'), this is still a monumental work. All the trademark Glass's trademark touches are there, the chugging chords and rippling arpeggios, but these are leavened by the harmonic freedom typical of his mature work. Although some of the vocal parts are at times underpowered, Glass's choral scoring is among his best. The spaceage parts of the Opera are suitably futurific, and his Columbus section features some charming latin pastiche.

Lush, lyrical and potent, this is good enough to confound even Glass's most trenchant critics.

Philip Glass's opera is the most tedious one for the listener that he has written since his first, "Einstein on the Beach." It lacks the beauty of some of his opera "Satyagraha," though it has the bombast of "Akhenaten," and the eccentric mysticism of "Einstein on the Beach." All in all, it seems to be a pastiche or a parody of Philip Glass music, supplied with a text by Henry David Hwang (to Glass's outline) that is as meretricious as Marc Blitzstein's "Airborne" Symphony.

There is quite a bit of Glass music that I find beautiful and have a high tolerance for repetition, but "Voyage" considerably exceeds that tolerance. And with the articulation of the cast in the recording of "Voyage," they might as well be singing in Sanskrit (as in "Satyagraha").

Finally on CD almost 15 years after its Met Opera premiere, The Voyage contains plenty of overwrought operatic tedium, but also some choral passages of surprising power and beauty.

I had heard this years ago and did not know a CD was available. It is typical Glass. Either you like him or you don't. I do. The recording was quite good.