Einstein turns 35

35 years ago, composer Philip Glass unleased an opera on the music world that was completely unlike anything that had come before. It's a safe bet that Puccini or Rameau would have been completely bewildered by a plotless work with no breaks, and text consisting mostly of solfège text and numbers. Heck, we're pretty sure audiences 35 years ago were bewildered, too, even by 1970s standards.

Glass went on to write a string of theater works that all bear his distinctive musical stamp, even as their plots grew more mainstream.

Here are a few videos to celebrate the 35th anniversary of "Einstein on the Beach."

KNEE PLAY:


TRAIN/SPACESHIP:


LEGOS:

New Release: Glass by McDuffie

This year the San Antonio Symphony features violinist Robert McDuffie in a new work, The American Four Seasons by Philip Glass. McDuffie's recording is coming out soon:

The cd and download will be released October 12, 2010. McDuffie performs in San Antonio on April 1&2, 2011.

How do you say that again?

San Antonio fans of Philip Glass have reason to celebrate this week, as Texas Public Radio's Cinema Tuesdays series brings a public screening of the 1983 film "Koyaanisqatsi" to the big screen at the Bijou at Crossroads theater. The highly influential film, directed by Godfrey Reggio, uses only the music of Philip Glass as its soundtrack as images of our modern world whiz by on the screen.

Showtime is 7:30 p.m., July 2.

More information is online at http://www.tpr.org/.

New Glass Opera opera opera opera opera ooooo pppp eee rr a

Gerard Mortier, General Manager Designate of New York City Opera, has announced that City Opera is commissioning Philip Glass to compose a new opera, The Perfect American which imaginatively explores the life and career of Walt Disney. Based on the recent novel Der König von Amerika by Peter Stephan Jungk, the opera, presented in collaboration with Improbable, is scheduled to open City Opera's 2012-2013 season.

The world premiere of this work, the 24th opera by Philip Glass, will honor the 75th birthday of the distinguished composer, whose association with City Opera dates back to the 1980s, when the company presented the New York premiere of his Akhnaten and recorded his Satyagraha.

Mr. Mortier has also scheduled a Philip Glass work for his inaugural 2009-2010 season when City Opera will present the landmark opera Einstein on the Beach. This will be the first staged production of the work in New York since 1992, reuniting director and co-creator Robert Wilson with the Philip Glass Ensemble and the Lucinda Childs Dance Company. Einstein on the Beach will be City Opera's first production in the newly refurbished New York State Theater, to be re-named the David H. Koch Theater.

Peter Stephan Jungk's novel The Perfect American imagines the final months of Walt Disney's life as recounted by the fictional Austrian cartoonist Wilhelm Dantine, who worked for Disney in the 1940s and 50s. Through the prism of Dantine's European sensibility, and his feelings of admiration and resentment toward his boss, the novel presents a multilayered image of the mid-20th-century American dream.

"The story of the last days of Walt Disney, American Icon and creator of perhaps the most pervasive fantasy world on our planet, is surprisingly gripping and at times disturbing. But, on the face of it, how could it be anything else? The pulse of his life has to be the pulse of our own American culture. And, like other aspects of life here, it is unimaginable, alarming, and truly frightening. I am looking forward to beginning these collaborations with Gerard Mortier at the New York City Opera," stated Philip Glass.