Einstein on the Beach screening

December 30, 2022

Event Information:
Widely credited as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the 20th century, this rarely performed work launched its director Robert Wilson and composer Philip Glass to international success when it was first produced in Avignon, France in 1976 with subsequent performances in Europe and in New York at the Metropolitan Opera. It is still recognized as one of their greatest masterpieces. Nearly four decades after it was first performed and twenty years since its last production, Einstein on the Beach was reconstructed for a major international tour including the first performances in the United Kingdom and the first North American presentations ever held outside of New York City; including a performance in Toronto on June 8, 2012. The international tour of Einstein on the Beach began in Montpellier in the spring of 2012 and concluded in South Korea in the fall of 2015, bringing this ground-breaking work to new audiences and an entirely new generation.

Einstein on the Beach breaks all of the rules of conventional opera. Instead of a traditional orchestral arrangement, Glass chose to compose the work for the synthesizers, woodwinds and voices of the Philip Glass Ensemble. Non-narrative in form, the work uses a series of powerful recurrent images as its main storytelling device shown in juxtaposition with abstract dance sequences originally by Andrew de Groat, and for the 2012 version by American choreographer Lucinda Childs. It is structured in four interconnected acts and divided by a series of short scenes, or "knee plays".

"Einstein on the Beach": The Primacy of Metaphor by Craig Owens.