…C.C. caught the penultimate performance of Philip Glass’s pacificst epic “Satyagraha.” [Full review to come...]

Umm, so, aside from the gentleman two seats away from me who puked in the aisle right before the curtain for Act II went up, and the couple next to me who wouldn’t stop whispering through the quietest moments of the music, and catching a glimpse of Rufus Wainwright looking well and enjoying the Grand Tier during first intermission, I was mostly able to pay attention to the opera.

Except for when, mid-way through the second act–with the faint odor of a stranger’s vomit occasionally wafting by–I heard a dark, mysterious, and familiar descending melodic line coming from the orchestra. Then suddenly it hit me: THIS MUSIC IS FROM “THE HOURS!”

[UPDATE: FoM has a sound clip.]

I can’t believe Glass took music from his opera about Gandhi and stuck it into the score for “The Hours”! I mean, I love “The Hours.” Don’t get me wrong. I’ve watched it about a billion times (you know, for personal reasons that need not be articulated here).

And I know that composers steal from themselves (and each other) all the time. But the problem is that “The Hours” is probably better known now, especially to those under the age of thirty. Chances are, your parents didn’t play the soundtrack to “Satyagraha” on the old eight track. (Although the gentleman who was the buffer between me and the guy who was barfing told me an interesting anecdote about how some friends of his, for about five years during the 80s, would always have “Satyagraha” playing any time he went to visit their apartment. Can you imagine?)

The bottom line is that it was distracting. I kept picturing Nicole Kidman in Virginia Woolf’s drawing room, quill in one hand, cigarette in the other, realizing that it is possible to die. I would imagine that’s not quite how Glass looked when he decided to cut and paste the music from what will arguably go down as one of his master works into a film score.

Although, judging from the exhibition of Chuck Close portraits of Glass in The Met Gallery, dude only has one look: