What a treat ... The opera, Einstein on the Beach, composed by Philip Glass, choreographed by Lucinda Childs and designed and directed by Robert Wilson, opened it's preview performances in Ann Arbor prior to heading out on a world tour. I attended the first of these 4 1/2 hour performances on January 20th at the Power Center.
The opera -- more like opera meets performance art meets Philip Glass - is not the usual lush setting, tragic story, gorgeously costumed staging that comes to mind with the term opera. There is no plot, the music, dance and staging is minimal (if not quite minimalist) and there is little libretto - just a few poems and spoken lines that are repeated multiple times within a "scene". The bulk of what libretto there is are sequences of numbers such as "12345678, 12345678, 1234, 1234, 12345678". Given that the opera honors Einstein, the numbers are appropriate as are the slow robot-like movements of the choreography.
Glass, Wilson and Childs brought Einstein's humor into the opera. Much of the context for individual scenes are visual and auditory puns on Einstein's work - the term "sand" suggests particle theory and dancers in a field represent the unified field theory. Performers wearing baggy grey pants, loose shirts and suspenders stick their tongues out at the audience on several occasions -- reminiscent of a popular photo of Einstein.
Both music and dance are hypnotic rather than lyrical. Some of it very enjoyable, some of it painfully fatiguing. In fact, the work requires great endurance on the part of the musicians, dancers and
the audience since there is no intermission. All of us, performers and
audience alike, sneaked breaks quietly while others remained behind to carry on.
Overall, the opera felt very long. I kept wishing that Wilson had lopped off 20-30% of everything. Given the repetition, that would have been possible. I was not alone. By the end, 20% of the originally packed house were gone.
The audience was warned that since this was the first performance, there might be a few glitches - and in fact, the event started 20 minutes late. There were a few noticeable mistakes, but it ran smoothly overall. The quality of the performance was another matter. The soprano was not quite up to the enormous challenge of her part that night. Also, many of the performances lacked the fluidity and intensity that I expect will come with time. There are still 8 weeks remaining before the world premiere in France, and so there is time for polish.
What was my overall response to this very-special performance? I enjoyed parts of it enormously and am glad that I was in attendance for this "event of the year". I would love to see how it evolves in the months ahead - although sitting through it for another 4.5 hours seems daunting.
Wilson, Glass and Childs collaborated on this production and were
in attendance in Ann Arbor. It is expected that this will be their final production - as they are all in their 70s.
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