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Einstein on the Beach premiered on July 25, 1976, at the Théâtre Municipal in Avignon, France, as part of the Avignon Festival. [1] It was performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble and presented by the Byrd Hoffmann Foundation. [2] The opera was also staged that summer in Hamburg, Paris, Belgrade, Venice, Brussels and Rotterdam.
Nov 18, 2020 · “Einstein on the Beach” survives, in part, though extensive documentation. The studio recording with most of the original performers, released as a four-LP set in 1979 and later remastered for ...
- Mark Swed
- Classical Music Critic
- mark.swed@latimes.com
Einstein on the Beach. Opera in four acts by Robert Wilson and Philip Glass. Premiered on July 25, 1976 at the Festival d’Avignon, Avignon, France. Premiered on December 11, 1984 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York. Premiered on July 24, 1992 at the McCarter Theater, Princeton, New Jersey. Premiered on March 17, 2012 at the Opéra ...
Sep 21, 2012 · The first time the artists had ever performed “Einstein” all the way through was at the premiere. They didn’t know how long it was. The opera runs approximately 4.5 hours.
- Composition and Performance History
- Synopsis
- Structure
- Recordings
- In Popular Culture
- External Links
- Notes and References
Glass and Wilson first met to discuss the prospects of a collaborative work, and decided on an opera of between four and five hours in length based around a historical persona. Wilson initially suggested Charlie Chaplin or Adolf Hitler, whom Glass outright rejected, while Glass proposed Mahatma Gandhi (later the central figure of his 1979 opera Sat...
From the beginning of Glass and Wilson's collaboration, they insisted on portraying the icon purely as a historical figure, in the absence of a storyline attached to his image. While they did incorporate symbols from Einstein's life within the opera's scenery, characters, and music, they intentionally chose not to give the opera a specific plot. Th...
The work is structured as follows: 1. Prologue (solo electric organ) 2. Knee Play 1 (electric organ, SATB chorus) 3. Act 1 3.1. Scene 1 – Train (piccolo, soprano and tenor saxophones, solo soprano and alto voices, SATB chorus, two electric organs) 3.2. Scene 2 – Trial 3.2.1. Entrance (three flutes, soprano and alto chorus, electric organ) 3.2.2. "M...
Three "complete" recordings of the opera have been made: the first in 1978, initially released on the Tomato label (TOM-4-2901) in 1979, and later reissued by CBS Masterworks, followed by Sony Classical (both M4K 38875); the second in 1993, released that same year on the Nonesuch label (79323). The 1978 recording was held to 165 minutes in order to...
The title was used as inspiration for the 1994 Counting Crows song "Einstein on the Beach (For an Eggman)". Excerpts were used as background music for several shots in season 3, episode 5 (2017) of the Mr. Robottelevision series. In the episode "Out with Dad" of the TV series Frasier, the title character, an opera lover, says, "You see, there's a s...
Book: Glass . Philip . Jones . Robert T . Music by Philip Glass . 1995 . Da Capo Press . 978-0-306-80636-0 . 40 . 477227754 . English.Book: Griffel . Margaret Ross . Operas in English: A Dictionary . 2013 . Scarecrow Press. 1 . 978-0-8108-8272-0 . 146 . 1248771681 . English.Web site: Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts . Stanford University Libraries . 2008 . 2012-04-14.Glass . Philip . Notes: Einstein on the Beach . Performing Arts Journal . 1978 . 2 . 3 . 63–70 . 10.2307/3245363 . 3245363 . 194880860 . 0735-8393.- Philip Glass
- Théâtre MunicipalAvignon, France
- Robert WilsonPhilip Glass
Einstein on the Beach (1976) is a pivotal work in the oeuvre of Philip Glass. It is the first, longest, and most famous of the composer’s operas, yet it is in almost every way unrepresentative of them. Einstein was, by design, a glorious “one-shot”-a work that invented its context, form and language, and then explored them so exhaustively ...
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Oct 29, 2012 · Philip Glass and Robert Wilson created “Einstein on the Beach” in 1976, and neither music nor music theater — including, and especially, opera — has ever been quite the same since.
