Debuting at the Avignon Festival in France in 1976, Robert Wilson and Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach completely reinvented opera, synthesizing the musical and theatrical avant-gardes of its time into one spectacular five-hour extravaganza. Colossal in ambition, length and scale, it appeared on paper to obey all the conventions of opera--four acts, the singers on the stage, duets, choirs, an orchestra pit--but it drastically departed from them in all other respects. Einstein on the Beach had no plot, the singers did ...
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Debuting at the Avignon Festival in France in 1976, Robert Wilson and Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach completely reinvented opera, synthesizing the musical and theatrical avant-gardes of its time into one spectacular five-hour extravaganza. Colossal in ambition, length and scale, it appeared on paper to obey all the conventions of opera--four acts, the singers on the stage, duets, choirs, an orchestra pit--but it drastically departed from them in all other respects. Einstein on the Beach had no plot, the singers did not play characters, the music was minimalist and repetitive, and connections between the images and the music were also fairly minimal. Nonetheless, the opera successfully stormed the gates of classical opera and seized the public imagination. Following its 1976 premiere, the work was staged twice, in 1984 (at the Brooklyn Academy of Music) and 1992 (at Princeton)--and then, for the first time in 20 years, it was performed in January 2012 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, an event that paved the way for an official tour that commences in March 2012, with stops in London, Toronto, Brooklyn, Berkeley, Mexico City and Amsterdam. This anniversary volume gathers previously unpublished material that includes Robert Wilson's original workbook, sketches and storyboards annotated with Philip Glass' notes, as well as photographs from the opera's various world tours. Together these documents illustrate the genesis of a collaboration that created a revolution in contemporary opera.
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