Glass & Wilson: Einstein on the Beach

Philip Glass wrote about his compositional processes: "I don't care about music theory, I'm only interested in listening to music. I begin by listening. Like images emerging from the mist and becoming visible." This seminal work of avant-garde opera from composer Philip Glass and director Robert Wilson arrives full-circle, coming to France, the site of it's 1976 Avignon Festival world premiere, at the tail end of this 2014 revival tour for a landmark Theatre du Chatelet production and a first ever filming by award-winning arts filmmaker Don Kent. Eschewing conventional narrative, the opera revolves loosely around pacifist Einstein's relationship to the creation of the atomic bomb. In continuity with the opera's debut, for this new production, hailed by Le Figaro as 'meticulously crafted total artwork in which the visual and musical craft are inseparable,' the music is again performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble and the choreography devised by original cast member Lucinda Childs for her Lucinda Childs Dance Company, with the scenes taking place under Bob Wilson's own digitally remastered light design.