photography Darren Seiler

einstein on the beach
parts 3+4
2004

an opera by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson

Einstein on the Beach is the first in Philip Glass's trilogy of portrait operas. Leigh Warren & Dancers collaborated with the Adelaide Vocal Project and State Opera of South Australia to present a completely new production of parts 3 & 4 of the opera.

The overarching theme of the reinterpretation of this 20th century masterpiece is the phenomenon of light. Einstein, like many scientists before him, was engaged in a lifetime investigation into the mysteries of the nature and properties of light. Revelations and incidents that occurred in Einstein's life acted as inspiration for creation of the source material.

The structure of the work follows the music closely, allowing the individual elements to entwine, creating new and complex equations of movement, sound and light. The challenge was to make the journey from a conceptual place where its world is measured, quantified and prescribed, to the philosophical where the simple question of "How much can you love another human being?" is possible to express yet paradoxically impossible to measure.