Einstein On The Beach Philip Glass Rarlab
Despite its title, Einstein on the Beach is not a staged biography of the German physicist Albert Einstein, and none of its scenes is set on a beach. Moreover, despite its subtitle, it is neither an opera nor a play in any conventional sense. More accurately, it is a theater piece with music. Its text, a collaboration of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass with contributions by Christopher Knowles, Lucinda Childs, and Samuel M. Johnson, has little meaning without the music, composed by Glass, and without the spectacle, staged by Wilson, which accompany it.
Einstein on the Beach, the minimalist opera by Philip Glass, represents the culmination of a unique musical style within the minimalist genre developed by Glass over several decades. Since its premiere, only two analyses have been offered for the music of this opera, by Glass himself, and by Keith Potter. These analyses have provided.
The play is essentially plotless and leaves the creation of this crucial element to those who witness its performance, though it provides suggestive aural and visual guidelines which channel and focus audience perceptions. These perceptions arise through a series of musical, verbal, and visual effects which last the four-hour and forty-minute length of the work. They change almost imperceptibly, the stage ensemble often repeating a single word, phrase, or even syllable for as long as twenty minutes to the accompaniment of a matching figure in the music, but there is always change—even when there seems not to be. At various unexpected points, eye and ear simultaneously perceive marked changes, and it is at these times that radical shifts occur, both within the music and on the stage. Because Einstein on the Beach portrays a series of these shifts, and because it does so reductively, through increasingly simple yet ever more suggestive musical and verbal devices, one may consider it an example of serial minimalism, a contemporary technique of composition which has received equal amounts of favorable and unfavorable criticism.
Wilson and Glass have steadfastly resisted the writing of any interpretative program or scenario for their work, believing that the audience must derive individual yet complementary experiences from what it witnesses. A summary of the stage action conveys little of the dynamism which infuses the work and nothing of the spectacle essential for the experience its creators intend. One who wishes to comprehend Einstein on the Beach must experience its text, music, and spectacle simultaneously; its effectiveness is diminished if any of these elements is lacking.
Outlined, Einstein on the Beach contains five “Knee Plays” (metaphorically suggesting bends, turns, and transitions), which precede and follow each of its four acts. The four acts separately introduce three dominant visual elements—a locomotive, a courtroom, and a spaceship—then prismatically combine elements of each with the next dominant element. Both chorus and orchestra complement this visual fragmentation by segmenting and recombining matching textual and musical motifs.
The first Knee Play is in progress as the audience enters the auditorium. Two women sit at tables; their fingers play across the tabletops as one recites numbers at random while the other converses with some invisible companion. Imperceptibly, almost inaudibly, keyboards play a three-note descending figure which begins the music. These two elements proceed for approximately fifteen minutes and are only slightly altered by the sixteen-member Chorus, each member of which appears individually in the orchestra pit, taking a full two minutes to reach his or her assigned place. The Knee Play ends in a blackout when the last member of the Chorus is in position; the entire segment lasts thirty minutes. Configuring your logbook in logten pro x for mac.
Without pause, the lights come up on a boy standing on a tower. He holds a translucent tube in his outstretched hand. Spotlights converge on the tube and reflect prismatically from it. As the scene proceeds, the boy sails paper airplanes to the stage below. A single female dancer appears, wearing tennis shoes and holding a tobacco pipe in her left hand. As she dances, lights slowly come up on the Chorus, the members all holding pipes and dressed in tennis shoes, white shirts, and baggy slacks with suspenders. They recall photographs of Einstein,..
A great classic from the second half of the 20th century, the opera composed by Philip Glass will be presented in concert version. A rare opportunity to discover this staggering score in masterful hands and an exceptional production.
First performed in 1976 at the Festival d’Avignon, with stage direction by Robert Wilson, Einstein on the Beach is a composite portrait of the physicist in four acts and five interludes (the famous Knee Plays). Considered a 20th-century masterpiece, the opera will be performed here in its musical version. Philip Glass’s extraordinary score will be interpreted—in its entirety—by the seven musicians of the Belgian ensemble Ictus, accompanied by the baroque choir Collegium Vocale Gent. And in the role of the narrator, none other than Suzanne Vega, who infuses the text with vitality and lightness. With the set design by artist Germaine Kruip and an immersive sound system, this unprecedented version of Einstein on the Beach changes the audience’s relationship to the work. Everyone can be in motion: the instrumentalists, who change places on stage, and the spectators, who can enter and leave the concert hall freely during the performance, as Robert Wilson intended in 1976. A unique chance to discover a monument of American minimalism in concert.
NUMBERED SEATS
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- Ictus
- Collegium Vocale Gent
- Suzanne Vega - récitante
- Georges-Elie Octors - direction
- Tom De Cock - direction
- Germaine Kruip - scénographe
- Igor Semenoff - violon
- Chryssi Dimitriou - flûte
- Bettina Berger - flûte
- Jean-Luc Plouvier - clavier
- Jean-Luc Fafchamps - clavier
- Dirk Descheemaeker - clarinette basse, saxophone soprano
- Asagi Ito - saxophone soprano, saxophone alto
- Joowon Chung - soprano
- Magdalena Podkoscielna - soprano
- Elisabeth Rapp - soprano
- Charlotte Schoeters - soprano
- Ursula Ebner - alto
- Karolina Hartman - alto
- Gudrun Köllner - alto
- Cécile Pilorger - alto
- Malcolm Bennett - ténor
- Dan Martin - ténor
- Tom Phillips - ténor
- Philipp Kaven - basse
- Bart Vandewege - basse
- Martin Schicketanz - basse