Everybody who is anybody came on Friday to experience what Peter Gelb, unblushing head of the Met, labelled “a modern masterpiece”. The hopefully delirious celebrants out front included Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, four Tibetan Buddhist monks, Chuck Close, Richard Gere, Suzanne Vega, Paul Shrader, and, oh yes, the composer, Philip Glass. The official press release told us so.

Quite a few in the less glamorous part of audience gave up before the sweet-sweet-sweet end of this gift-to-be-simple endurance contest. It lasted nearly four hours. Some natives got restless. For the initiated, however, and for the instantly converted, this had to be an important night, an uplifting orgy of communal navel-gazing. Satyagraha, anno 1980, had arrived at last at the Met.