ABSTRACT

Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s most celebrated collaboration, the landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, had its premiere at the Avignon Festival in 1976. During its initial European tour, Metropolitan Opera premiere, and revivals in 1984 and 1992, Einstein provoked opposed reactions from both audiences and critics. Today, Einstein is well on the way itself to becoming a canonized avant-garde work, and it is widely acknowledged as a profoundly significant moment in the history of opera or musical theater. Einstein created waves that for many years crashed against the shores of traditional thinking concerning the nature and creative potential of audiovisual expression. Reaching beyond opera, its influence was felt in audiovisual culture in general: in contemporary avant-garde music, performance art, avant-garde cinema, popular film, popular music, advertising, dance, theater, and many other expressive, commercial, and cultural spheres. Inspired by the 2012–2015 series of performances that re-contextualized this unique work as part of the present-day nexus of theoretical, political, and social concerns, the editors and contributors of this book take these new performances as a pretext for far-reaching interdisciplinary reflection and dialogue. Essays range from those that focus on the human scale and agencies involved in productions to the mechanical and post-human character of the opera’s expressive substance. A further valuable dimension is the inclusion of material taken from several recent interviews with creative collaborators Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, and Lucinda Childs, each of these sections comprising knee plays, or short intermezzo sections resembling those found in the opera Einstein on the Beach itself. The book additionally features a foreword written by the influential musicologist and cultural theorist Susan McClary and an interview with film and theater luminary Peter Greenaway, as well as a short chapter of reminiscences written by the singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega.

chapter |11 pages

Paying attention to Einstein

part |1 pages

Einstein on the shores of culture

chapter |34 pages

Einstein on the radio

chapter |17 pages

Sous les pavés, la plage

chapter |12 pages

Einstein on the Beach in Belgrade

A critical testimony

part |1 pages

From repetition to representation

chapter |19 pages

“Only pictures to hear”

Reading Einstein on the Beach through experimental theater

chapter |16 pages

Creating beauty in chaos

Robert Wilson’s visual authorship in Einstein on the Beach

chapter |7 pages

Stay out of the way of Bob Wilson when he dances

Lucinda Childs interviewed by Jelena Novak 1

part |1 pages

Beyond drama

chapter |23 pages

Heavenly bodies

The integral role of dance in Einstein on the Beach

part |1 pages

Operatic machines and their ghosts

chapter |18 pages

Leaving and re-entering

Punctuating Einstein on the Beach

chapter |21 pages

Historia Einsteinalium

From the beach to the church, via theater and “state bank”

chapter |18 pages

Critical excavations