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Einstein on the
Beach is
finally in Los Angeles after several long and winding road trips over a 37 year period to almost everywhere else.
Philip Glass’s path-blazing first opera marks the starting
point of minimalist music in a theatrical setting. It was the first post-modern opera. Of the fourteen
Glass operas to date, it is still probably most revolutionary in form. With its immediate followers, Satyagraha (1979) and Akhnaten (1983), it formed a trilogy of
“portrait operas” of powerful change-agent personalities in human history. The arrival of Einstein on the Beach is an important musical event for Los Angeles.
We might have seen the opera shortly after its 1976 premiere in Avignon, France, had the management of the still fledgling LA Opera not deemed it too radical for our audiences. In recent years, LA has been teased with bits and pieces of the work in live performance. Some years ago Santa Monica's Jacaranda series programed the five so-called “Knee Plays” that bookend and bind the various scenes. The tantalizing morsels only whetted collective appetites for more.
The omission of the full opera could have been redeemed last year when its tour got as close as UC Berkeley, but financial concerns trumped it yet again. Even the current LA Opera season had been pre-sold with no Einstein in its slate. But forget all that. The stars eventually aligned and General Director Plácido Domingo announced on September 12 it was to be a go.
The omission of the full opera could have been redeemed last year when its tour got as close as UC Berkeley, but financial concerns trumped it yet again. Even the current LA Opera season had been pre-sold with no Einstein in its slate. But forget all that. The stars eventually aligned and General Director Plácido Domingo announced on September 12 it was to be a go.
Einstein opens this Friday for a succession of three evening performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. More good news: though other hands had restaged the groundbreaking work since its premiere nearly four decades ago, Los Angeles audiences will see the original version of its reunited and now iconic creative team.
Domingo also announced last month that this appearance would likely mark the last collaboration on the 1976 masterpiece by composer Glass, director/designer Robert Wilson, and choreographer Lucinda Childs. “The Los Angeles premiere of Einstein will mark the final North American performances of an international tour that began in 2012. It isn’t like anything that we have ever done before, and I hope that Einstein will entice many new audience members into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for the very first time.”
Speaking of new audiences, contemporary Los Angeles has undergone a sea-change in tastes. What may have intimidated yesterday’s patrons is now a younger crowd’s artistic relish. Avant-garde works in all genres are in hot demand. As if to underscore LA Opera’s own changed convictions, following last week's Chinese Theater screening of the 3-D Wizard of Oz, I noted young ladies in Einstein wig and mustache get-ups handing out card promotions for the operatic Einstein to curious young crowds up and down trendy Hollywood Blvd.
Speaking of new audiences, contemporary Los Angeles has undergone a sea-change in tastes. What may have intimidated yesterday’s patrons is now a younger crowd’s artistic relish. Avant-garde works in all genres are in hot demand. As if to underscore LA Opera’s own changed convictions, following last week's Chinese Theater screening of the 3-D Wizard of Oz, I noted young ladies in Einstein wig and mustache get-ups handing out card promotions for the operatic Einstein to curious young crowds up and down trendy Hollywood Blvd.
Patrons will discover the performance of Einstein on the Beach to be far from Dorothy’s operatic Kansas. There is no plot narrative, but a series of mind-portraits in dreamlike tableaus is propelled by the hypnotic score. They are bound together by those Knee Play interludes that reinforce the opera’s ideas as they allow time for scenery changes. Three main scenes in the opera --"Train", "Trial", and "Field/Spaceship" -- allude to Einstein's theory of relativity and his unified field theory. Others reference nuclear weapons, science and popular radio.
The viewer, however, is not necessarily aware of these allusions. Scenes of various human behaviors such as a train robbery or lovers in the park interweave with abstract, futuristic scenes in a fantasy spaceship. Time travels from historic settings to the future and back again, but it all ends seraphically in the here and now. The cosmic blends with the intimate.
The "star" of the show, Einstein, is, literally, a cypher whose associated imagery is an endless ream of numbers. The eponymous character doesn't sing but plays the violin as did Albert Einstein himself. Violinist Jennifer Koh (top photo, at the left) performs the Einstein character in this production. (Albert Einstein taught himself to play the violin as a boy. While playing the instrument for relaxation in later years he often gained scientific insights.)
The production features the Lucinda Childs Dance Company and the Philip Glass Ensemble, conducted by music director Michael Riesman. Principal performers, in addition to Koh, are Helga Davis, Kate Moran, Jasper Newell, and Charles Williams. The spoken texts come from the writings of Christopher Knowles, Samuel M. Johnson and Lucinda Childs.
The work lasts four and a half hours with no traditional intermissions. The audience may enter and temporarily depart the performance as desired. (Concession services will be available in the Chandler's lobbies throughout the performance.)
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Photo by Reginald Donahue/Courtesy the Rothmans
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Apropos, the title “Einstein on the Beach” is not a reference to nearby Southern California beaches. Rather, a famous photo (above) documents Einstein’s 1939 summer residence at Nassau Point, Long Island, where he was casually dressed in shorts and sandals with a businessman and friend named Rothman. In that fateful summer Einstein signed a prepared letter to President Roosevelt warning of Nazi plans to invent a nuclear weapon. The missive would instigate the Manhattan Project and, thirty-five years later, become the pivotal inspiration for the subject matter of the Wilson/Glass opera.
The impact of Einstein on the Beach was in many ways as shattering to the world of music -- certainly of opera -- as that of Einstein’s discoveries to the world of theoretical physics. Whatever one thinks of the entirety of this unconventional work, it is an experience not to be missed and it is now within the reach of Southern Californians to hear and see it for themselves.
Don’t miss the opportunity.
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Performance details
Einstein on the Beach, An Opera in Four Acts
Music/Lyrics: Philip Glass
Direction/Set and light design: Robert Wilson
Direction/Set and light design: Robert Wilson
Choreography by Lucinda Childs
Dates and times:
Friday, October 11, 2013, at 6:30pm
Friday, October 11, 2013, at 6:30pm
Saturday, October 12, 2013, at 6:30pm
Sunday, October 13, 2013, at 2:00pm
Sunday, October 13, 2013, at 2:00pm
Location
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N.
Grand Avenue, Los Angeles CA 90012.
Ticket purchase options:
In person, LA Opera Box Office at
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
By phone at 213.972.8001
Except as noted, all photos are by LA Opera and used by their permission.
Rodney Punt may be contacted at [email protected]
2 comments:
I remember when it opened in NY, 'back in the day.' Hanging out with the musicians, who were definitely among those 'cutting edge' artists of the time. Delighted it's finally getting its due in the West.
Thanks, Erica. It was received rapturously this past weekend, and with ever growing audiences for the three performances. Remember, it was announced as coming only on September 12, so the marketing campaign proved itself stellar and it was met with a pent up audience demand of nearly four decades duration.
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