Gustav Holst composed around a dozen operas. Most of them are early works that have still never been performed, and only one of the others is heard at all regularly nowadays. But that exception, Sāvitri, is one of the gems of early 20th-century British music, and the finest product of Holst’s preoccupation with Indian culture.
One of the great virtues of the one-act work is that it’s easy to present in the concert hall. No elaborate staging is required – the story, from the Sanskrit epic the Mahābhārata, of how Sāvitri outwits Death to save her husband Satyavān, is uncomplicated, and Holst presents it in an utterly economical way. The performance that formed the centrepiece of the Britten Sinfonia’s concert was prefaced by four of Holst’s Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda, and presented on the bare Barbican platform, with the wordless female chorus (the Britten Sinfonia Voices) out of sight at the back of the stage and three members of the Pagrav Dance Company, choreographed by Urja Desai Thakore, providing a delicate tracery of quiet movement around the leads.
