Einstein on the Beach

Einstein on the Beach cast, crew, and musicians

Two weeks ago, Ben and I took a trip down to Montpellier, France to see Philip Glass' famous opera, Einstein on the Beach. This opera is unlike any other. For starters, it's nearly 5 hours long. Yes, Wagner wrote insanely long operas. But Einstein has no breaks - there is no intermission or anything. It's in 4 acts, but in between acts there is music, and some of it is the most exciting in the opera. So you don't want to miss it. The audience is encouraged to come and go as they please. Ben and I both left briefly once, but other than that, we sat in our seats the entire time, riveted.

Second, there's no story and the text is made up entirely of numbers, solfege syllables (do re me, etc.), and sort of disembodied snatches of poetry. There is no plot, just a series of scenes. You can read more about the construction of the opera here.

This opera was premiered in 1976 and hasn't been performed in 20 years. The tour of the opera being done right now is tremendously exciting not just because it's the first time anyone's seen it live in 20 years, but also because Philip Glass himself and Robert Wilson, the director of the premiere, are both involved in this one as well. Here's a trailer they put together for the 2012 revival and tour:

In the 10 weeks leading up to the revival premiere (the night before the performance we saw in Montpellier), they rehearsed the work at the University of Michigan. Here's a longer video about the opera that the U of M made:

Seeing this opera was one of the most impressive displays of concentration, focus, memorization, control, energy, and precision I've ever seen. Like all of Philip Glass' music, it's minimalist, so it's extremely repetitive. All the the singers in the chorus do the entire opera by memory. Imagine singing 12341234123412341234123412341234 as fast as you can ad infinitum. And then changing to something else at precisely the right time, without losing track of where you are. For 5 hours straight. The dancers had to perform highly controlled, extremely repetitive movements many, many times in a row. A friend of Ben's from Rice (who is also the wife of one of my friends from Boston), was actually a member of the chorus. She wrote a fantastic blog about the experience of auditioning and being in the production here and here. We sat out in the main square of Montpellier after the performance and talked about the experience. She said the dancers would literally have to crawl out of bed the morning after because their legs were so sore from the movements they had to do. Professional dancers, sore!

My favorite scene was the one called "Spaceship" towards the end. It's one of the iconic scenes from the opera and you can see the set in the first picture of this blog that Ben took during the curtain calls. The set is a bunch of boxes with circular and linear lights. The chorus and musicians are in the boxes and the dancers are flying around the stage and doing other cool things. The music in this section is some of the most exciting and, I would assume, most challenging. How anyone could concentrate to perform their parts with the lights constantly blinking and changing is beyond me. It was absolutely amazing.

I would highly, highly, highly recommend this opera to anyone. It's unlike anything you've ever experienced. And it really doesn't feel 5 hours long, strangely. If you live in or near London, Toronto, New York City, Berkeley, California, Mexico City, Amsterdam, or Hong Kong, go see this production! You won't regret it. A listing of all the performance dates is available here.

The rest of our trip...

We didn't get to see much of Montpellier, but we weren't too impressed by what we saw, unfortunately. It seems like an old, not-well-taken-care-of city to us. We couldn't find anywhere good to eat dinner, so we ended up going to the grocery store on the main square and making a dinner ouf of the odds and ends we could find. We were eating pre-cooked (and not very good) chicken wrapped in crepes (yup, they sell pre-made crepes at all the grocery stores here!) and shelling peas while sitting outside of McDonalds. Needless to say, we got some funny looks! We did see this street performer, though, who was interesting.

We were in Montpellier for less than 24 hours. Ben had to be in Geneva two days later for rehearsals of Mahler 9, so the day after the opera, we took the train to Geneva. We were supposed to get there by early afternoon and would have the day to explore the city. Unfortunately, our train was delayed nearly 2 hours and then, at the final stop before Geneva, we had to get off the train and wait for another one outside in the cold rain for 30 minutes! We had no idea why (and still don't know). Fortunately, other people on the train realized that we didn't understand the announcements they were making in French and so told us that if we were going to Geneva, we had to get off and change trains. It was definitely a long weekend of traveling! Ben snapped this wonderfully flattering picture of me on the train:

When we got there, it was rainy and cold and we were pretty tired. On the recommendation of a friend who lived in Geneva for a year, we had an excellent and cheap dinner at Chez Ma Cousine. We decided that the business model of this place is excellent: they serve only three things (half a rotisserie chicken, homemade french fries, and salad) for 15 CHF (Swiss francs). A huge bargain, good food and lots of it! Exactly what we were looking for. If you're ever in Geneva on a budget, check this place out!

Geneva was beautiful, I just wish I had had more time to see the city! Ben was there for a week rehearsing Mahler 9 and took this picture of the famous Jet d'Eau in Lake Geneva:

Hopefully I'll get to go back and spend more time there!