Susanne Kennedy Markus Selg Philip Glass
Einstein on the Beach
© Einstein on the Beach, Susanne Kennedy et Markus Selg © Ingo Hoehn ©
© Einstein on the Beach, Susanne Kennedy et Markus Selg © Ingo Hoehn ©
© Einstein on the Beach, Susanne Kennedy et Markus Selg © Ingo Hoehn ©
Opera in 4 acts by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson (1976)
Dunvagen Music Publishers Inc
Performers, Suzan Boogaerdt, Tarren Johnson, Frank Willens,Tommy Cattin, Dominic Santia, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández
Violin solo, Diamanda La Berge Dramm
Soprano solo, Álfheiður Erla Guðmundsdóttir, Emily Dilewski
Alto solo, Sonja Koppelhuber, Nadja Catania
Music, Basler Madrigalisten Vocal Ensemble, Ensemble Phoenix Ensemble Phoenix Basel
Basler Madrigalisten - musical preparation, Raphael Imoos
Musical direction, André de Ridder
Design, Susanne Kennedy, Markus Selg
Staging, Susanne Kennedy
Scenography, Markus Selg
Costumes, Teresa Vergho
Lighting, Cornelius Hunziker
Sound design, Richard Alexander
Sound design Building/Train, Andi Toma (Mouse on Mars)
Sound, Robert Hermann
Video, Rodrik Biersteker, Markus Selg
Choreography, Ixchel Mendoza Hernández
Dramaturgy, Meret Kündig
Produced by Theater Basel (Basel) in collaboration with the Berliner Festspiele and the Wiener Festwochen (Vienna) Einstein On the Beach by Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, © 1976 Dunvagen Music Publishers Inc, Used by Permission. Movements in Dance 2 by G. I. Gurdjief
La Villette (Paris), the Philharmonie de Paris and the Festival d'Automne à Paris present this performance in co-production.
With the support of the Fondation d'entreprise Hermès
In partnership with France Inter
Half a century after its creation, Susanne Kennedy – invited for the first time to the Festival d’Automne – endows Einstein on the Beach, the mythical opera by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, with all of its impact as contemporary ritual, bringing us a post-humanist work of total art. Taken up with notions of time and space, the show places the audience at the heart of a true musical and visual maelstrom.
Since it was first performed in 1976, Einstein on the Beach has become one of the legendary musical works of the XXth century. Presented at the Festival d'Automne in 1976, 1992 and 2013, the work, or rather this radical artistic and temporal experience, is an opera of the third type. Initiatory and multisensorial, machine-like and Dionysian, it is a visual and sound-based maelstrom driven by an irresistible, trance-inducing form of energy. Indeed, its effect is such that it seemed impossible to separate Einstein on the Beach from its two young creators, the composer Philip Glass and the director Robert Wilson. The opera was, however, almost destined to be a source of inspiration for the director Susanne Kennedy, whose work has never ceased exploring the questions of ritual and mask, as well as the place of the voice and body. Alongside the visual artist Markus Selg, she immerges the audience in the midst of the performers, in a hallucinatory, revolving decor which is both part-primitive and part-futuristic, psychedelic and cybernetic. It invites us to experience in an entirely new way the immense power of this contemporary ritual.
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