1st Edition
Einstein on the Beach: Opera beyond Drama
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.
Contents
List of figures viii
List of music examples x
Series editor preface xi
Foreword: music and culture in the wake of Einstein xiii
Contributors xvii
Acknowledgements xxiii
Introduction xxv
JOHN RICHARDSON AND JELENA NOVAK
Knee chapter 1
Paying attention to Einstein: Philip Glass interviewed by John Richardson 1
PART 1
Einstein on the shores of culture 13
1 Einstein on the radio 15
ROBERT FINK
2 Sous les pavés, la plage 49
JOHANNES BIRRINGER
3 Einstein on the Beach in Belgrade: a critical testimony 66
MIŠKO ŠUVAKOVIĆ
Knee chapter 2
Einstein on the Beach is not radical, it is classic: Robert Wilson interviewed by Bojan Djordjev 79
PART 2
From repetition to representation 87
4 Intuition and algorithm in Einstein on the Beach 89
KYLE GANN
5 “Only pictures to hear”: reading Einstein on the Beach through experimental theater 106
PWYLL AP SIÔN
6 Creating beauty in chaos: Robert Wilson’s visual authorship in Einstein on the Beach 125
AVRA SIDIROPOULOU
Knee chapter 3
Stay out of the way of Bob Wilson when he dances: Lucinda Childs interviewed by Jelena Novak 141
PART 3
Beyond drama: surfaces and agencies of performance 149
7 Heavenly bodies: the integral role of dance in Einstein on the Beach 151
LEAH G. WEINBERG
8 Anonymous voice, sound, indifference 174
ZEYNEP BULUT
Knee chapter 4
Artists recall and respond 195
Suzanne Vega, Under the influence – Philip Glass 195
Two Finnish composers reminisce: Juhani Nuorvala, Petri Kuljuntausta 198
Tom Johnson, Rehearsing Einstein on the Beach 203
Two steps forwards but three steps back, and then one step forwards again – Peter Greenaway interviewed by John Richardson 206
PART 4
Operatic machines and their ghosts 211
9 Leaving and re-entering: punctuating Einstein on the Beach 213
SANDER VAN MAAS
10 Historia Einsteinalium: from the beach to the church, via theater and “state bank” 231
JELENA NOVAK
Knee chapter 5
Critical excavations 253
Pieter T’Jonck, How democratic baroque came about in dance and Einstein on the Beach 253
Frits van der Waa, Einstein in the press 261
Appendix 1: Robert Wilson, Einstein on the Beach,storyboard drawings 271
Appendix 2: Einstein on the Beach, spoken texts 276
Bibliography 287
Index 301
Biography
Jelena Novak is Researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Sociology and Aesthetics of Music at NOVA University of Lisbon. Her publications include Opera u doba medija (Opera in the Age of Media), Postopera: Reinventing the Voice-Body, and Operofilia.
John Richardson is Professor of Musicology at the University of Turku in Finland. His publications include An Eye for Music: Popular Music and the Audiovisual Surreal, Singing Archaeology: Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, and The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics (eds. Richardson, Gorbman, and Vernallis).
Published over forty years after the legendary performances at the Avignon Festival, this book offers an abundance of fresh debates and fond reminiscences of the work...Simply put, this edited compilation is a ground-breaking and multifaceted ex-amination of a landmark piece of theater, and it is written in a very approachable and clear style. Not only is a highly valuable contribution to the study of opera studies, but also to an array of other artistic disciplines. New Sound International Journal of Music 56 II, 2020
