Einstein on the Beach

Einstein on the Beach is an absorbing and surreal experience. We hear luminous chords from an electric organ, distant voices reciting numbers, and flutes performing fast, hypnotic cycles that subtly evolve over huge spans. The work, a collaboration between Philip Glass and the stage director Robert Wilson, premiered in 1976. The opera has no story and no defined characters. Instead, Wilson devised three visual scenarios: “Train,” “Trial,” and “Field/Spaceship.” Each references an aspect of Einstein’s work and legacy, from his theories about time and space to his inadvertent contribution to the nuclear arms race. Glass sets the scenes with bold, emphatic music. Speaking voices, of a woman, a man, and a child, present poems and texts over undulating textures from the organ and choir. The scenes are connected by five “Knee Plays,” shorter movements with more sophisticated musical textures. The small orchestra is dominated by woodwinds, but also includes a solo violin representing Einstein, who played the instrument himself. Music and visuals combine to create hypnotic sensations, with the slowly evolving music often heard with stylized and rhythmical dance patterns. There are moments of tenderness, as in the “Night Train” vocal duet in Act II and the soprano aria “Bed” in Act IV. The work ends with an apocalyptic outburst. A train, present in the earlier scenes, transforms into a spaceship, and the singers float off the stage in clock-like transparent tubes.