Bernard Holland writes in Sunday’s New York Times of the re-staging of Phillip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach. Claiming that it completely changed the way he thought about musical theater – he makes a good point about the difference in approach to traditional musical events. Einstein… never relies on chorus-verse-chorus or for that matter a traditional intermission, instead it uses repetition and tape loops to provide and opening for the listener to walk away for a bit and then return. Why not, the opera is almost 5 hours long, however it is a “fast” 5 hours.
I saw EOTB in 1992 at the BAM festival, and I will say that the performance asks for as much as the listener is willing to give and returns to the listener an abundance of ideas, images and thinking about what opera is and could be.
A lot of people tend to forget that EOTB is not just a Philip Glass opera, it is also a Robert Wilson opera. Although I don’t speak of him often, I am a big Robert Wilson fan. So thoroughly have the images created by Wilson penetrated my thoughts about EOTB that it is impossible not to see them when I hear Philip Glass’s music in other places. The images, specifically the spaceship in act 4, and the tall chair are amazing images both alone and as objects on a set.
Robert Wilson is an artist who I think deserves some kind of large scale showing of his work, lets hope this happens soon. Robert Wilson also collaborated with David Byrne on a project called The Knee Plays the record of the music for these pieces has finally been re-released and is well worth your time. I will admit to not being a big David Byrne “world Music” fan, however this music recorded with the New Orleans based “Dirty Dozen Brass Band” is, if I may speak like James Lipton, a delight.
My apologies on the quality of the photos – they were taken quickly out of books in the studio and are really not the greatest things.
