Philip Glass - Einstein on the Beach (1976) - Music Sales Classical Einstein on the Beach (1976) Listen Work Notes Opera in four acts by Robert Wilson and Philip Glass which includes two large-scale dance scenes. Spoken text (English) by Christopher Knowles, Samuel M Johnson and Lucinda Childs. Text Writer spoken text by Christopher Knowles, Samuel M Johnson and Lucinda Childs Publisher Philip Glass Einstein on the Beach (1976) CAST 2 female, 1 male, and 1 male child in speaking roles (for the Wilson production) 16 person SATB chamber chorus soprano soloist smaller tenor solo part SYNOPSIS The first in Glass' trilogy of operas about men who changed the world through the power of their ideas, Einstein's sub-text is science. The opera is non-narrative in form, and the producer has two options: to reproduce the original Robert Wilson production (which exists on videotape), or to create a new series of stage and dance pictures based on themes relating to the life of Albert Einstein. The opera is structured in four ‘acts’ connected by ‘knee plays’, or intermezzi.

28 April; 4,13 May; 4 June - Dortmund, Germany 27 MAR 2014 Thalia Theater, Symphony Space, NY Dublin Guitar Quartet 21,22 January - Ann Arbour, MI 16-18 March - Montpellier, France 24,25 March - Reggio Emilia, Italy 8-10 June - Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, Toronto, Canada 14-16,19-23 September - Opera House, Brooklyn, NY 26-28 October - Zellerbach Hall, Berkeley, CA 9-11 November - Teatro del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Mexico 5-7,10-12 January 2013 - Het Muziektheatre, Amsterdam, Netherlands 30 SEP 2008 Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall, New York, USA Philip Glass Ensemble Timothy Fain, violin; Michael Riesman, conductor 10 NOV 2006 Opera National de Paris-Garnier, Paris, France Ballet de l'Opera National de Paris-Garnier Other Dates: 11,14

,16-18 November - Opera National de Paris-Garnier, Paris, France 13 November - Opera National de Paris-Garner, Paris, France 01 JUN 2006 Einstein on the Beach Dunstan Playhouse, State Opera of South Australia New co-production of Einstein on the Beach (Parts 1 & 2) by State Opera of South Australia and Leigh Warren & Dancers directed by Leigh Warren, designed by Mary Moore, lighting desig by Geoff Cobham and performed by artists of Leigh Warren & Dancers and Adelaide Vocal Project ; Timothy Sexton, conductor Other Dates: 2-4 June - Dunstan Playhouse, State Opera of South Australia 22 AUG 2001 Einstein: On the Beach and at Caltech | Caltech 11/08/2013 11:27:16 Einstein: On the Beach and at Caltech The weekend of October 11–13 brought a revival of the 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, and along with it an opportunity for the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech to display some of its treasures: prized portraits of Einstein, plus texts and

 images from Einstein's life.

The principal mission of the Einstein Papers Project is to collect, edit, annotate, and translate all of Einstein's papers—a rich trove of material that includes not only published scientific works, but also his notebooks, lectures, diaries, and correspondence. Einstein bequeathed his papers to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which holds the largest collection of original Einstein manuscripts. At Caltech, Professor of History Diana Kormos-Buchwald, director and general editor of the Einstein Papers Project, heads an international team of scholars who carry out research for The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, published by Princeton University Press. The series is anticipated to fill 30 volumes and is nearing its halfway point. "It takes us two to three years for each documentary volume and its companion English-language translation, so it won't be us who finish the project," she says. The latest volume (Volume 13), released on September 25, 2012, takes Einstein through a turbulent 15 months of his life from January 1922 to March 1923, during which he received the Nobel Prize and undertook a lengthy journey to Japan, Palestine, and Spain.

Volume 14, slated for release in October 2014, covers the years from 1923 to 1925, documenting Einstein's reactions to the earliest formulations of quantum mechanics. "One of the very interesting things that we discover in every volume is how many projects Einstein was involved in that never led to concrete publications," Kormos-Buchwald says. Because the Einstein Papers Project is the premier U.S. source for all things Einstein, when the Los Angeles Opera decided to bring Einstein on the Beach to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, it asked Kormos-Buchwald if she could arrange exhibits about the historical Einstein to display in the second- and third-floor lobbies. Caltech trustee Marc Stern, chair of the Los Angeles Opera board of directors, expressed his excitement about the project, and soon Kormos-Buchwald was working with Garrett Collins and the marketing and outreach departments at the Los Angeles Opera to devise an appropriate evocation of Einstein's connections both to California via Caltech and to music. On opposite sides of the second floor lobby, two exhibits were set up by Kormos-Buchwald and a team of professional installers led by Sam Mellon of Curatorial Assistance in Pasadena.

One contained the series of images Albert Einstein at Home, created by photographer Herman Landshoff between 1946 and 1950. The series consists of 12 portraits of Einstein in his later years, a humble man with wild hair wearing suspenders, working in his office or simply sitting or standing. There are six prints of this series in existence; one is owned by Caltech. The other exhibit consisted of nine collages, usually on permanent display at the Einstein Papers Project, that document Einstein's three winters at Caltech (1930–1933); also included were three wall-size color facsimiles, one of Einstein's high school diploma and two of his early hand-written manuscripts on relativity, that were created in collaboration with the Williamson Gallery at the Art Center College of Design from originals held at the Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The third-floor exhibit, designed by Kormos-Buchwald specifically for Einstein on the Beach, and printed by James Staub of Caltech Graphic Resources, featured photographs of Einstein playing violin or piano and meeting with musicians.

It included quotes by Einstein about music and his favorite composers, and displayed manuscripts documenting Einstein's support of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra and his relationship with German composer Paul Dessau, who wrote a chamber music piece for violin and harpsichord (or piano) for Einstein's 50th birthday, in March 1929, as well as his own opera about the famed physicist, titled simply Einstein and performed in East Berlin in 1974. Despite the sea of documentation of Einstein's life compiled by the Einstein Papers Project, Einstein remains an enigmatic figure, simultaneously a scientist and a celebrity. The collages created to illustrate Einstein's time at Caltech give a sense of the sideshow atmosphere surrounding Einstein's presence in Southern California: newspapers at the time reported random sightings of the great man, and Einstein recorded his impressions of the media attention in his diaries. Einstein's mixed legacy is still on abundant display at Caltech. Einstein the scientist remains relevant in physics classrooms, both undergraduate and graduate, and his work resonates in the work of Caltech's researchers and theoreticians.

But Einstein the celebrity is present too: his face is printed on posters and T-shirts at the Caltech Bookstore, the guest room at the Athenaeum where he stayed during his visits to Caltech still bears his name; and the Landshoff portraits exhibited for the performance of Einstein on the Beach grace the entryway of the Board of Trustees meeting room in Millikan Library. It was this mix of science and celebrity surrounding Einstein that appealed to cutting-edge composer Philip Glass and experimental theater director Robert Wilson when they decided in the mid 1970s to collaborate on an opera based on a historical figure. As Glass reflects in his book, Music by Philip Glass, "As a child, Einstein had been one of my heroes. Growing up just after World War II, as I had, it was impossible not to know who he was. The emphatic, if catastrophic, beginnings of the nuclear age had made atomic energy the most widely discussed issue of the day." The result of the collaboration was a nearly five-hour opera without intermissions. The opus makes no effort to tell a story, much less recount a man's life, but is nevertheless filled to the brim with Einstein.

As Kormos-Buchwald explains, "You have a lot of visual symbolism in Einstein on the Beach. There are the portraits of Einstein projected onto the stage, and for half the opera you have a musician dressed as Einstein in suspenders playing the violin. But there are also elevators, illustrating the principle of equivalence, and space-time diagrams and rockets. You have a child playing with a flashlight and a compass, as Einstein himself did, and there are rigid rods and clocks throughout the opera, critical to Einstein's theory of special relativity. Thus many visual and pedagogical tools that Einstein employed to make relativity understandable are being used in the opera." As documented in volume 13 of The Collected Papers, Einstein often expressed his desire for "a normal life," feeling at odds with his celebrity. And yet, Kormos-Buchwald suspects, Einstein might not have been astounded by the exhibits and operas, or by a 30-volume opus. "I think he was very well aware he was a public figure.

He knew that everything he said would be used and scrutinized in the future." Written by Cynthia Eller Einstein: On the Beach and at Caltech | 11/08/2013 Einstein: On the Beach and at Caltech The weekend of October 11–13 brought a revival of the 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, and along with it an opportunity for the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech to display some of its treasures: prized portraits of Einstein, plus texts and images from Einstein's life. The principal mission of the Einstein Papers Project is to collect, edit, annotate, and translate all of Einstein's papers—a rich trove of material that includes not only published scientific works, but also his notebooks, lectures, diaries, and correspondence. Einstein bequeathed his papers to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which holds the largest collection of original Einstein manuscripts. At Caltech, Professor of History Diana Kormos-Buchwald, director and general editor of the Einstein Papers Project, heads an international team of scholars who carry out research for The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, published by Princeton University Press.

The series is anticipated to fill 30 volumes and is nearing its halfway point. "It takes us two to three years for each documentary volume and its companion English-language translation, so it won't be us who finish the project," she says. The latest volume (Volume 13), released on September 25, 2012, takes Einstein through a turbulent 15 months of his life from January 1922 to March 1923, during which he received the Nobel Prize and undertook a lengthy journey to Japan, Palestine, and Spain. Volume 14, slated for release in October 2014, covers the years from 1923 to 1925, documenting Einstein's reactions to the earliest formulations of quantum mechanics. "One of the very interesting things that we discover in every volume is how many projects Einstein was involved in that never led to concrete publications," Kormos-Buchwald says. Because the Einstein Papers Project is the premier U.S.

source for all things Einstein, when the Los Angeles Opera decided to bring Einstein on the Beach to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, it asked Kormos-Buchwald if she could arrange exhibits about the historical Einstein to display in the second- and third-floor lobbies. Caltech trustee Marc Stern, chair of the Los Angeles Opera board of directors, expressed his excitement about the project, and soon Kormos-Buchwald was working with Garrett Collins and the marketing and outreach departments at the Los Angeles Opera to devise an appropriate evocation of Einstein's connections both to California via Caltech and to music. On opposite sides of the second floor lobby, two exhibits were set up by Kormos-Buchwald and a team of professional installers led by Sam Mellon of Curatorial Assistance in Pasadena. One contained the series of images Albert Einstein at Home, created by photographer Herman Landshoff between 1946 and 1950. The series consists of 12 portraits of Einstein in his later years, a humble man with wild hair wearing suspenders, working in his office or simply sitting or standing. There are six prints of this series in existence; one is owned by Caltech.

The other exhibit consisted of nine collages, usually on permanent display at the Einstein Papers Project, that document Einstein's three winters at Caltech (1930–1933); also included were three wall-size color facsimiles, one of Einstein's high school diploma and two of his early hand-written manuscripts on relativity, that were created in collaboration with the Williamson Gallery at the Art Center College of Design from originals held at the Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The third-floor exhibit, designed by Kormos-Buchwald specifically for Einstein on the Beach, and printed by James Staub of Caltech Graphic Resources, featured photographs of Einstein playing violin or piano and meeting with musicians. It included quotes by Einstein about music and his favorite composers, and displayed manuscripts documenting Einstein's support of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra and his relationship with German composer Paul Dessau, who wrote a chamber music piece for violin and harpsichord (or piano) for Einstein's 50th birthday, in March 1929, as well as his own opera about the famed physicist, titled simply Einstein and performed in East Berlin in 1974.

Despite the sea of documentation of Einstein's life compiled by the Einstein Papers Project, Einstein remains an enigmatic figure, simultaneously a scientist and a celebrity. The collages created to illustrate Einstein's time at Caltech give a sense of the sideshow atmosphere surrounding Einstein's presence in Southern California: newspapers at the time reported random sightings of the great man, and Einstein recorded his impressions of the media attention in his diaries. Einstein's mixed legacy is still on abundant display at Caltech. Einstein the scientist remains relevant in physics classrooms, both undergraduate and graduate, and his work resonates in the work of Caltech's researchers and theoreticians. But Einstein the celebrity is present too: his face is printed on posters and T-shirts at the Caltech Bookstore, the guest room at the Athenaeum where he stayed during his visits to Caltech still bears his name; and the Landshoff portraits exhibited for the performance of Einstein on the Beach grace the entryway of the Board of Trustees meeting room in Millikan Library. It was this mix of science and celebrity surrounding Einstein that appealed to cutting-edge composer Philip Glass and experimental theater director Robert Wilson when they decided in the mid 1970s to collaborate on an opera based on a historical figure.

As Glass reflects in his book, Music by Philip Glass, "As a child, Einstein had been one of my heroes. Growing up just after World War II, as I had, it was impossible not to know who he was. The emphatic, if catastrophic, beginnings of the nuclear age had made atomic energy the most widely discussed issue of the day." The result of the collaboration was a nearly five-hour opera without intermissions. The opus makes no effort to tell a story, much less recount a man's life, but is nevertheless filled to the brim with Einstein. As Kormos-Buchwald explains, "You have a lot of visual symbolism in Einstein on the Beach. There are the portraits of Einstein projected onto the stage, and for half the opera you have a musician dressed as Einstein in suspenders playing the violin. But there are also elevators, illustrating the principle of equivalence, and space-time diagrams and rockets. You have a child playing with a flashlight and a compass, as Einstein himself did, and there are rigid rods and clocks throughout the opera, critical to Einstein's theory of special relativity.

Thus many visual and pedagogical tools that Einstein employed to make relativity understandable are being used in the opera." As documented in volume 13 of The Collected Papers, Einstein often expressed his desire for "a normal life," feeling at odds with his celebrity. And yet, Kormos-Buchwald suspects, Einstein might not have been astounded by the exhibits and operas, or by a 30-volume opus. "I think he was very well aware he was a public figure. He knew that everything he said would be used and scrutinized in the future." Written by Cynthia Eller Einstein on the Beach – review | Music | The Guardian Einstein on the Beach – review 3 / 5 stars Share on Messenger Close Philip Glass 's list of stage works stretches well beyond 20. The majority have reached Britain, but until now Einstein on the Beach – the work he devised in 1976 with director Robert Wilson , launching his career as an opera composer and making his name internationally – had never been seen here. The belated UK premiere of Einstein harks right back to that beginning: it's Wilson's re-creation of the original five-hour production.

That, though, is both a strength and a shortcoming of the revival. Glass's Einstein score does allow for the possibility of other directors creating their own stage images inspired by the life of the great physicist, but the music is so bound up with Wilson's visual concept and is largely so subservient to it that to place the score in any other theatrical context would seem very strange. Einstein on the Beach began a trilogy of Glass's operas, each of which centres on a different historical figure. But for all their originality, not only are Satyagraha (about Gandhi's life and teaching) and Akhnaten (about the Egyptian pharaoh) much more conventionally operatic than Einstein, they are far less abstract, too; you won't learn much about Albert Einstein or his theories from an evening in the Barbican, except that he loved toy trains as a child and played the violin, and that his theories had something to do with the destructive power of nuclear explosions. When Einstein was first performed, nobody had seen anything like it; the idea of an abstract opera, in which the music underpinned a series of slowly moving stage pictures was entirely new.

But for all its historical importance, it seems rather old-fashioned now, and at times the experience was like watching the theatrical equivalent of a period performance, as if achieving the same results using today's technology would lose something essential. Many of the images in Wilson's tableaux would nowadays be conjured using video or computer-generated graphics rather than with smudgy slide projections, painted flats and cardboard cut-outs; it would all seem slicker, less contrived. Somehow, too, Wilson's abstract inventions have lost a lot of their visual magic: a narrow rectangle of light slowly rotating from the horizontal to the vertical to the accompaniment of Glass's churning patterns isn't quite the iconic image it once was. On the opening night, as well, backstage technical problems added to that sense of dated clunkiness. The performance began half an hour late, and an unscheduled interval had to be inserted after the first act, when one tower refused to move on and off stage as expected. Wilson himself then appeared to explain the problems and to announce that the final scene would not include the flying figures it should. But if the mechanics creak, the performances certainly have the kind of commitment, unflagging concentration and energy on which such projects depend.

The dancers executing Lucinda Childs ' choreography seem tireless; the vocalists have Glass's endless melodic tropes entirely by memory; the actors are faultless in their delivery of texts whose essence is convolution and repetition. The ensemble under Glass stalwart Michael Riesman gives the score verve and drive and just occasionally, when all the visual and musical elements fuse into a unity, as they do in the final scene, the real originality and power of Glass and Wilson's concept comes across. ‘Einstein on the Beach,’ at the Brooklyn Academy of Music - The New York Times The New York Times Music |Time Travel With Einstein: Glass’s Opera Returns to the Stage Search Time Travel With Einstein: Glass’s Opera Returns to the Stage ‘Einstein on the Beach,’ at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Continue reading the main story As the audience milled into the Brooklyn Academy of Music for Saturday night’s performance of “Einstein on the Beach,” an exhilarating revival of the pathbreaking 1976 opera by the composer Philip Glass and the director Robert Wilson , the piece seemed already to have started.

The electric keyboards and synthesizers of the Philip Glass Ensemble quietly played the low three-note organ drone that runs through the opening “knee play,” as the creators call the five episodes that punctuate the major scenes of the opera’s four acts. Two compelling lead performers, Helga Davis and Kate Moran, dressed in baggy gray pants and white shirts with black suspenders, having moved incrementally toward seats onstage, began muttering together. One spoke numbers randomly; the other recited a nonsensical yet alluring text by Christopher Knowles. (“Would it get some wind for the sailboat.”) Before long, from risers in the pit, a dozen choristers dressed like Ms. Davis and Ms. Moran, their faces pasty looking, stood up and began singing Mr. Glass’s ritualistic music, some counting off various groups of numbers, others intoning the recurring drone bass on solfège syllables (la, sol, do). Photo Einstein on the Beach From top, Jasper Newell, Sharon Milanese and Caitlin Scranton in Philip Glass’s opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times “Einstein on the Beach” is more known about than known.

This rare revival, part of a nine-stop, three-continent tour, with choreography by Lucinda Childs, is the work’s first presentation in New York since the 1992 performances at the Brooklyn academy. Though the piece, with sets and lighting by Mr. Wilson, is a landmark of avant-garde opera, it has a reputation for being incomprehensible and endless (at nearly four and half hours without intermission). Continue reading the main story But as performed here, the opening knee play could not have been more calming and sweetly mystical. That it was already happening when the audience arrived made clear that we were all invited to enter and leave the theater at will. “Einstein” was not going away. Advertisement Continue reading the main story During the riveting first scene of Act I, “Train,” the mood changes completely. The music is suddenly exuberant and crazed, with spiraling riffs and cyclic instrumental figures, and manic bursts of syllables and sputtering from the chorus. Caitlin Scranton exuded eerie calm in the “Diagonal Dance,” in which she moved forward and backward over and over, looking statuesque and wonderfully strange.

The scene is filled with curious characters, including a wide-eyed man in a red shirt doing mathematical calculations (Tomás Cruz). Photo Einstein on the Beach This revival, the first in New York since 1992, includes movement designed by Robert Wilson. Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times As a boy, Einstein loved model trains. He later used trains as analogies to explain his theories. The dominant figure in this train scene is a young boy (Jasper Newell), who stands on an elevated bridge over tracks. He examines a luminous geometric shape in his hands and now and then tosses paper airplanes to the smoke-covered stage floor. Is he a scientist-to-be? Or young Einstein himself? Or just a boy in a mindless moment? With the chorus and instrumental music making this scene so frenetic and momentous, it seemed to encapsulate a larger message of this plotless opera: that scientific calculation, spiritual perceptions and a boy’s daydreaming involve not such different mental states as we may think. In advance of this tour many critics and devotees of the Glass operas wondered whether “Einstein” would by now come across as dated or pretentious. But the piece seems particularly suited to current musical politics and social culture.

In 1976 “Einstein” was seen as a combative declaration from the booming downtown scene directed against the established uptown culture, especially the complex, intellectual styles of contemporary music sanctioned within academia. Actually, at the time, Mr. Glass and Mr. Wilson were more interested in fulfilling their personal vision than engaging in polemics . Even when “Einstein” was here in 1992, the scars from that contemporary music battle were still sore. Now those bad times seem long gone. Composers do whatever they want to. Audiences are open to everything. Performers champion all styles. Video Excerpt: 'Einstein on the Beach' in 1976 An excerpt from the Trial(Bed)/Prison scene in the 1976 version of the opera, performed in La Monnaie, Brussels. embed It was wonderful to see the brilliant violinist Jennifer Koh, whose repertory ranges from Bach to flinty contemporary pieces, throw herself into the bewigged role of the violin-playing Einstein. In a couple of scenes, especially “Knee Play 2,” the music is essentially a daunting violin solo with endless spiraling figures. Both Ms.

Koh’s playing and her acting were gripping. Her participation seemed a testimony to the new openness. (Antoine Silverman takes over the role starting Wednesday.) Today, maybe more than ever, “Einstein” comes across as an original, visionary and generous work, anything but polemical. There are certainly moments of ominous intensity, especially the apocalyptic final scene of Act IV, “Spaceship,” in which we are taken inside the vehicle that has cruised above the action in earlier scenes. The music evokes the inevitable consequences of Einstein’s work: a nuclear blast. Cast members with their backs to the audience fiddle with blinking lights on a three-tiered control board as the accumulated sound becomes a hard-driving, breathless blur of indistinct, rapid-fire numbers backed up by threatening blasts from the swelling electric keyboards and frenetic woodwinds, all under the sure conducting of Michael Riesman. Video Excerpt: 'Einstein on the Beach' in 2012 An excerpt from the Trial(Bed)/Prison scene in the 2012 version of the opera, performed in Montpellier, France.

embed Yet there is no anger in “Einstein.” In the “Night Train” scene, where we see (or so it seems) the young Einstein and his wife in a romantic moment on a train trip, the breathless vocal duet ends with the woman (Ms. Davis) pulling a gun on her mate (Gregory R. Purnhagen). But in the way she smiles and gloats the move seems just a play in a continuing gender battle. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The two trial scenes are highlights of the piece. Mr. Wilson blurs images of a laboratory experiment and a courtroom, with judges in wigs and witnesses watching with brown-bag lunches. On the floor before the judge is a huge, luminous bed. Many metaphors and questions come together here. A lab experiment is a kind of trial. Did Einstein dream up his theories at night? Did fears of the implications of his work give him nightmares? In the second trial, Ms. Moran, playing a witness, lounges on the bed reciting over and over some incantatory words written by Ms. Childs, a riff about finding herself in a “prematurely air-conditioned supermarket” and seeing colored bathing caps.

And, she explains, daftly, “I wasn’t tempted to buy one, but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach.” Sometimes, such wandering thoughts are subjected to intense scrutiny in a trial. Eventually, her character turns into a weapon-wielding Patty Hearst, whose real-life trial was going when “Einstein” was created. It is hard to know how to categorize this production. Since the sets of the 1992 revival were destroyed, this production meticulously reconstructs the original, with up-to-date lighting and technology. It includes the dazzling choreography for the opera’s two extended ballet sequences that Ms. Childs created for the 1984 revival and have been used since. I am still not convinced that “Einstein on the Beach” would lose any of its mystical allure, vitality and wonderment if it were trimmed a bit. Maybe more than a bit. For musical richness, I prefer Mr. Glass’s “Satyagraha.” Yet “Einstein” invites you to let your mind wander. Plenty of operas have that effect without intending it.

“Einstein on the Beach” runs through Sunday at the Howard Gilman Opera House, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene; (718) 636-4100, bam.org. A version of this review appears in print on September 17, 2012, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Time Travel With Einstein. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Paddle8: Einstein On the Beach - Robert Wilson Pin It on Pinterest Description This suite of wrought-iron chairs is from the opera of the same name, “Einstein on the Beach” by American Minimalist Composer Philip Glass with text by the theatrical producer, Robert Wilson. Rather than structure the opera in terms of a narrative, the present lot takes a formalist approach with which the structure is based on the spatial arrangement of each act. Bearing this in mind, these compositions were inspired by the scenes set forth by Bob Wilson himself.

Christophe describes acquiring the chairs, "...the day after the presentation of Einstein on the Beach...Bob Wilson was totally broke…he came to spend Christmas with me and he said 'Christophe you should buy three of my Einstein chairs, and put ‘em outside,' which I did...and I’ve had them…37 years, but you see, they’re in very good condition and shape…" Additional Information Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner. Recently repatinaed. Currently mounted with screws into ground. Pedestals available upon request. This lot ships from Queens, NY, US. About Robert Wilson View Profile » Robert Wilson (American, b. 1941) is described by the New York Times as “a towering figure in the world of experimental theater and an explorer in the uses of time and space on stage.” Born in Waco, Texas, Wilson is among the world’s foremost theater and visual artists. His works for the stage unconventionally integrate a wide variety of artistic media, including dance, movement, lighting, sculpture, music and text. His images are aesthetically striking and emotionally charged and his productions have earned worldwide acclaim. Wilson was educated at the University of Texas and at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn.

He founded the New York-based performance collective “The Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds” in the mid-1960s and developed his first signature works, such as “Deafman Glance” (1970) and “A Letter for Queen Victoria” (1974-1975). He wrote the seminal opera “Einstein on the Beach” in 1976 with Philip Glass. Wilson has collaborated with writers and musicians, such as Tom Waits, Susan Sontag, William Burroughs, and Lou Reed. He has left his imprint on masterworks, such as Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” Jean de la Fontaine’s “Fables,” and Homer’s “Odyssey.” Wilson’s drawings, paintings, and sculptures have been presented internationally, both in solo and group shows, and his works are held in public and private collections around the world. Wilson has been honored with such prestigious awards as two Premio Ubu awards, the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale, and an Olivier Award. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Wilson is the founder and Artistic Director of the Watermill Center, a laboratory for performing arts in Watermill, New York. Einstein: On the Beach and at Caltech | 11/08/2013 Einstein: On the Beach and at Caltech The weekend of October 11–13 brought a revival of the 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, and along with it an opportunity for the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech to display some of its treasures: prized portraits of Einstein, plus texts and images from Einstein's life. The principal mission of the Einstein Papers Project is to collect, edit, annotate, and translate all of Einstein's papers—a rich trove of material that includes not only published scientific works, but also his notebooks, lectures, diaries, and correspondence. Einstein bequeathed his papers to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which holds the largest collection of original Einstein manuscripts. At Caltech, Professor of History Diana Kormos-Buchwald, director and general editor of the Einstein Papers Project, heads an international team of scholars who carry out research for The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, published by Princeton University Press.

The series is anticipated to fill 30 volumes and is nearing its halfway point. "It takes us two to three years for each documentary volume and its companion English-language translation, so it won't be us who finish the project," she says. The latest volume (Volume 13), released on September 25, 2012, takes Einstein through a turbulent 15 months of his life from January 1922 to March 1923, during which he received the Nobel Prize and undertook a lengthy journey to Japan, Palestine, and Spain. Volume 14, slated for release in October 2014, covers the years from 1923 to 1925, documenting Einstein's reactions to the earliest formulations of quantum mechanics. "One of the very interesting things that we discover in every volume is how many projects Einstein was involved in that never led to concrete publications," Kormos-Buchwald says. Because the Einstein Papers Project is the premier U.S.

source for all things Einstein, when the Los Angeles Opera decided to bring Einstein on the Beach to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, it asked Kormos-Buchwald if she could arrange exhibits about the historical Einstein to display in the second- and third-floor lobbies. Caltech trustee Marc Stern, chair of the Los Angeles Opera board of directors, expressed his excitement about the project, and soon Kormos-Buchwald was working with Garrett Collins and the marketing and outreach departments at the Los Angeles Opera to devise an appropriate evocation of Einstein's connections both to California via Caltech and to music. On opposite sides of the second floor lobby, two exhibits were set up by Kormos-Buchwald and a team of professional installers led by Sam Mellon of Curatorial Assistance in Pasadena. One contained the series of images Albert Einstein at Home, created by photographer Herman Landshoff between 1946 and 1950. The series consists of 12 portraits of Einstein in his later years, a humble man with wild hair wearing suspenders, working in his office or simply sitting or standing. There are six prints of this series in existence; one is owned by Caltech.

The other exhibit consisted of nine collages, usually on permanent display at the Einstein Papers Project, that document Einstein's three winters at Caltech (1930–1933); also included were three wall-size color facsimiles, one of Einstein's high school diploma and two of his early hand-written manuscripts on relativity, that were created in collaboration with the Williamson Gallery at the Art Center College of Design from originals held at the Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The third-floor exhibit, designed by Kormos-Buchwald specifically for Einstein on the Beach, and printed by James Staub of Caltech Graphic Resources, featured photographs of Einstein playing violin or piano and meeting with musicians. It included quotes by Einstein about music and his favorite composers, and displayed manuscripts documenting Einstein's support of the Palestine Symphony Orchestra and his relationship with German composer Paul Dessau, who wrote a chamber music piece for violin and harpsichord (or piano) for Einstein's 50th birthday, in March 1929, as well as his own opera about the famed physicist, titled simply Einstein and performed in East Berlin in 1974.

Despite the sea of documentation of Einstein's life compiled by the Einstein Papers Project, Einstein remains an enigmatic figure, simultaneously a scientist and a celebrity. The collages created to illustrate Einstein's time at Caltech give a sense of the sideshow atmosphere surrounding Einstein's presence in Southern California: newspapers at the time reported random sightings of the great man, and Einstein recorded his impressions of the media attention in his diaries. Einstein's mixed legacy is still on abundant display at Caltech. Einstein the scientist remains relevant in physics classrooms, both undergraduate and graduate, and his work resonates in the work of Caltech's researchers and theoreticians. But Einstein the celebrity is present too: his face is printed on posters and T-shirts at the Caltech Bookstore, the guest room at the Athenaeum where he stayed during his visits to Caltech still bears his name; and the Landshoff portraits exhibited for the performance of Einstein on the Beach grace the entryway of the Board of Trustees meeting room in Millikan Library. It was this mix of science and celebrity surrounding Einstein that appealed to cutting-edge composer Philip Glass and experimental theater director Robert Wilson when they decided in the mid 1970s to collaborate on an opera based on a historical figure.

As Glass reflects in his book, Music by Philip Glass, "As a child, Einstein had been one of my heroes. Growing up just after World War II, as I had, it was impossible not to know who he was. The emphatic, if catastrophic, beginnings of the nuclear age had made atomic energy the most widely discussed issue of the day." The result of the collaboration was a nearly five-hour opera without intermissions. The opus makes no effort to tell a story, much less recount a man's life, but is nevertheless filled to the brim with Einstein. As Kormos-Buchwald explains, "You have a lot of visual symbolism in Einstein on the Beach. There are the portraits of Einstein projected onto the stage, and for half the opera you have a musician dressed as Einstein in suspenders playing the violin. But there are also elevators, illustrating the principle of equivalence, and space-time diagrams and rockets. You have a child playing with a flashlight and a compass, as Einstein himself did, and there are rigid rods and clocks throughout the opera, critical to Einstein's theory of special relativity.

Thus many visual and pedagogical tools that Einstein employed to make relativity understandable are being used in the opera." As documented in volume 13 of The Collected Papers, Einstein often expressed his desire for "a normal life," feeling at odds with his celebrity. And yet, Kormos-Buchwald suspects, Einstein might not have been astounded by the exhibits and operas, or by a 30-volume opus. "I think he was very well aware he was a public figure. He knew that everything he said would be used and scrutinized in the future." Written by Cynthia Eller Philip Glass Philip Glass Please visit our sister sites: Philip Glass Born January 31, 1937, Baltimore, Maryland About Philip Glass Glass, a pioneer of the minimalist school, made his name as a composer with his first opera, Einstein on the Beach. Throughout his career, opera, along with film music, has been a major focus of his work. Operas Einstein on the Beach, opera in four acts and five 'kneeplays' Libretto by Christopher Knowles, Samuel M. Johnson, and Lucinda Childs.

July 25, 1976, Avignon Festival, Avignon, France; also 21 Nov. 1976, Metropolitan Opera, New York, New York (US premiere) Attacca, madrigal opera (1980) Satyagraha: M. K. Gandhi in South Africa, opera in three acts Libretto by the composer and Constance DeJong after the Bhagavadgita . September 5, 1980, Stadsschouwburg, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; also 29 July 1981, Artpark, Lewiston, New York (US premiere) (in sanskrit) The Panther (1982) [rev. of Attacca the CIVIL warS (Rome section) (1984) the CIVIL warS (Cologne section) (1984) [additional music] Akhenaten, opera in three acts with prologue and epilogue Libretto by the composer, Shalom Goldman, Robert Israel, and Richard Riddell after historical and miscellaneous sources.

March 24, 1984, Stuttgart, Germany; also 12 October 1984, Houston, Texas (US premiere) The Juniper Tree, children's opera (1985) (with Robert Moran) A Descent into the Maelstrom (1986) The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 Libretto by libretto by Doris Lessing after her novel of the same name. 1988 The Fall of the House of Usher, chamber opera in two acts with prologue Libretto by Arthur Yorinks after the short story by Edgar Allan Poe. May 18, 1988, American Rep., Cambridge, Massachusetts 1000 Airplanes On the Roof, theatre piece Libretto by David Henry Hwang. 1989 Hydrogen Jukebox, multimedia theater work (1990) The Voyage, opera in three acts with prologue and epilogue Libretto by David Henry Hwang. October 12, 1992, Metropolitan Opera, New York, New York Orphée, opera in two acts Libretto by Philip Glass after the film of Jean Cocteau.

May 14, 1993, American Rep., Cambridge, Massachusetts Les Enfants Terribles, dance opera Libretto by Philip Glass and Susan Marshall after after the film of Jean Cocteau. May 18, 1996, Theatre Casino, Zug, Switzerland The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five, opera in two acts Libretto by Doris Lessing after her novel of the same name. May 10, 1997, Theater der Stadt Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany Monsters of Grace, digital opera in three dimensions Libretto by Coleman Barks after the writings of Rumi. April 15, 1998, Royce Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, California The White Raven, opera in five acts Libretto by Luísa Costa Gomes. September 26, 1998, Julio Verne Auditorium, Teatro Camões, Lisbon, Portugal (with Robert Wilson) In the Penal Colony, chamber opera Libretto by Rudolph Wurlitzer after the story by Franz Kafka.

August 31, 2000, ACT, Seattle, Washington Galileo Galilei, opera in ten scenes Libretto by Philip Glass, Arnold Weinstein and Mary Zimmerman. July 24, 2002, Albert Ivar Goodman Theatre, Chicago, Illinois The Sound of a Voice Libretto by David Henry Hwang. May 24, 2003 Waiting for the Barbarians, opera in two acts Libretto by Christopher Hampton after the novel by John M. Coetzee. September 10, 2005, Erfurt Theater, Erfut, Germany Appomattox Libretto by Christopher Hampton after the novel by John M. Coetzee. October 5, 2007, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco, California Discography

Question: Which US composer wrote the 1976 opera, Einstein on the Beach?
Answer: Philip Glass