This is an account of my experience at a preview performance of “Einstein on the Beach” on Saturday, January 21st. For more background information about the opera and events leading up to its remount, check out our feature and our write-up of the welcome reception.
It was for the best – I needed a break. I took advantage of the opera’s come-and-go-quietly advisement (this being a nearly five-hour production with no intermission) and stepped outside into a coldness that I could feel, where cars and people moved at normal speeds and where nothing was, well, at all surprising.
After a few minutes I realized that “Einstein on the Beach” had me: I was under its spell and all I could think about was going back in to claim my seat, a voice telling me to stop trying to make sense of it and simply consume the experience. I don’t know what I looked like sitting there in the Power Center for the Performing Arts, but I have a pretty good idea. Perfectly still, almost entranced, the corners of my mouth stretching into a little smile of bedazzlement while my eyes worked overtime to take it all in.
This article is going to be something like a list of adjectives without any accompanying nouns, because while the impressions made on me are worth describing, I can’t speak to their sources. This was technically a “preview” performance, anyway, an un-interrupted and precisely executed run-through before its official premier in France on March 16th. It’s too bad I can’t convince my editor to send me overseas, cause I want to be there.
This production has no narrative structure in the way that nature has no narrative structure. It moves and grows and develops into different shades of beauty, but with no particular destination, each scene coming full-circle in accordance with its own organic pace. And it’s persistent, too. Like the gears of a clock, actors and lights and set pieces operate somehow gracefully and mechanically, as if previously set in motion, and the fact that this was all being performed in real time by human beings was beyond impressive. The technical mastery alone completely justifies every word of praise this opera has received.
This isn’t to say that it’s non-narrative simply for the sake of being abstract. There were themes at work – there were images, ideas, apparent motifs. And I tried to reason with it. I tried to compromise, trading my utmost attention for any hint of meaning or explanation. But all it would say in return was “surrender.” And once I did, it turned into a sunrise. Slow, but constantly moving, and beautiful, patiently bringing to light things that had previously been invisible. It wasn’t a sky without storms, either. Environments took on moody atmospheres in perfect cooperation with the electronic keyboards and woodwinds, and a scene where several dancers weaved around each other in varying diagonal patterns for nearly half an hour was captivating and brilliantly choreographed. For no second of its four-plus hour duration did it suspend its hypnotic quality. Like when you stare at a painting until you swear it begins to move, “Einstein” demands patience and concentration.
The reward, I guess, would be experience. While some things can be dissected and explained and reproduced, other things are best left to the mind simply as experiences. The closest I’ll get to grounding “Einstein” is to call it an exploration of time and space, a piece of art that – much like Einstein himself – seems to find more value in the search than in the discovery.
