This is an account of the welcome reception for the cast, crew and creators behind “Einstein on the Beach.” For more information specific to the opera, check out our preview from our January issue: https://mispymag.com/2011/12/einstein-on-the-beach/
Museums are typically places dedicated to exploring the past, but on this particular night the University of Michigan Museum of Art has become a place to celebrate the future.
Receiving a nametag, I clip my identity to my shirt pocket and make my way past the coat rack and up the stairs to an expansive room with a tall ceiling. The room is an elegant ghost town of tables and chairs, assorted wines and towering fruit trays, dimly lit with large paintings hanging on the walls. Smaller side rooms filled with portraits and sculptures and mythical walking canes reward those who arrive early.
Everyone must still be on their way over from the Michigan Theater, where the creators of “Einstein on the Beach” discussed the history of their incredible opera and their excitement in bringing it to Ann Arbor, and shortly after, to bigger stages in bigger cities. The thought produces a half-smile. My city is the starting line for the most exciting artistic event of the year.
They begin to arrive as I finish my second glass of lemonade. Actors and dancers and musicians and choreographers. The entire cast and crew of “Einstein on the Beach” and others who have spent the past few months, some even the past few years, working towards the dream of resurrecting the landmark production in this city.
I feel as though I stumbled into the locker room of a team who just won a championship game, where hours of practice and repetition and trial and error have culminated in a moment of beautiful realization. The invitation said this was a welcome reception. It’s more like a celebrative sigh of accomplishment, a far classier version of an end-of-exam-week party. My questions can wait a few more minutes. This atmosphere is awesome.
As in sports, there are few things more bonding in the human experience than achieving a hard-earned goal with some close companions. The camaraderie in here is tangible. And it should be – some of these people have been working together since the 1970s, before this opera became known as the greatest artistic achievement of the twentieth century, or even known at all. I’ll have to wait until the 21st of this month to finally see it for myself, but right now I have the chance to talk to its creators. As I approach director Robert Wilson, I realize that I’m about to speak with one of the most innovative and influential creators of our time. I say creator because I don’t know the word that encompasses director, playwright, performer, designer, choreographer, lighting specialist, etc. That word, as I’m about to find out, is simply “Bob.”
He greets me with a firm handshake and a warm smile. He asks for a business card and I’m relieved that I still have one on me. This is a man who, along with renowned composer Philip Glass, has made something twistedly abstract and beautifully rendered, exhausting in length and endlessly rewarding to behold. A polarizing piece of art, if there ever was one. I ask him how I should take it all in next weekend.
“Well, it’s simply something that you hear and something that you see,” he glances away from me, towards the art-filled wall, pauses, and continues. “If you go to a museum and look at a painting, you appreciate it for the color and the composition and your experience of it. This work is non-narrative, so there’s no storyline to follow. It’s something that you experience. You should drop all your preconceptions and come with an open mind and just experience it the way you would a painting.”
The color, composition, and experience. The more I hear about this opera, from descriptions in reviews to the words of Mr. Wilson himself – who I keep having to remind myself to refer to as ‘Bob’ – the more it reminds me of a child seeing the world for the first time. Nothing makes sense, but nothing needs to yet. You’re learning to distinguish shapes and colors, connect sounds with movements, learning what’s soft and what’s sharp, understanding the gift of your senses. “Einstein on the Beach” is, perhaps, an exercise in fundamental awareness, adjusted to the difficulty level appropriate for those who have long since exited the child’s world.
As I listen to Bob describe this production and add his words to everything I’ve previously heard, I start to think that I have a warped view of what opera really is. There’s this image that sprouts up in my head whenever I hear the word opera. It’s of a large Italian man with greased-back hair and a thinly-trimmed mustache, one hand on his belly and the other in the air, belting out words I don’t understand in an invasively deep and resounding manner. Is opera the most fitting categorization of “Einstein on the Beach?”
“In the Latin sense of the word, it means opus. It means work,” Bob tells me. “Today we tend to think of opera as song and music. But really, (opera) is everything – philosophy, dance, music, light, poetry, architecture – all of the arts are in opera. So I think opera is a good way of describing what it really is.” I guess I really dig opera, I just never knew it until now.
It’s a subtly inspirational experience, talking to an individual who has spent a lifetime traveling the world doing the things he loves. You just don’t have conversations with these types of people on a daily basis. As he speaks, Bob’s admiration for friend and collaborator Philip Glass is evident. He tells me about the odd jobs they worked before anyone in the industry knew their names. Bob worked at an Italian restaurant on Bleaker Street in New York. Philip was driving a taxi, and before that he was a plumber. The two of them met at a play, discovered shared interests, and “Einstein” was born. All it takes is vision and ambition, and a couple temporary day jobs.
The fruit trays are picked over and the beverage bowls are near empty. The low-battery light is blinking on my voice recorder. I didn’t realize how quickly the night was passing by, and I’m thinking that if I enjoy talking about this opera so much then sitting through its five-hour duration will be much less daunting than it originally sounded. As I scan the room, I notice executive producer Linda Brumbach conversing near the opposite wall and I think I may be able to get a quick word.
It’s impossible to overlook the passion she has for performance art, particularly this production. She talks with enough enthusiasm to go around, and I’m starting to feel less like a reporter in a locker room and more like a member of the team sharing in the excitement. I ask if there is any significance to the timing of this production, and she explains that this is the most potentially-responsive generation to be exposed to this opera. I completely agree. The unpredictable, abstract nature of the opera, its incorporation of electronic music and visual stimulation through lighting and choreography, and its trust in the intelligence and open-mindedness of its audience are all elements that should allow it to connect with a generation who has seen and embraced teases of this type of art, but has yet to experience it in wholly-realized and high-quality form.
As I set down my glass and head towards the coat rack, I stop and take another look at one of the large paintings on the wall. I note the color, the composition, and the overall experience of this moment. Now I try to imagine it all coming to life.
