“The story an opera tells makes imaginative sense perhaps – odd people wait around and sing now and then to music played in a pit – even before it starts we know who Einstein was and what a beach is and the believability of opera – EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH is an opera – there are scene changes – a courtroom, a prison, a field, a train, a moon, a computer building, a space ship, a small boy on a tower throwing older-paper-airplanes, two very beautiful single heroines too, you can see a few times their lovely fingers counting eighth notes – and there is a wonderful solo dance – the cast doesn’t change clothes, it sings a lot and acts different parts and dances and sometimes someone freezes in a pose – the stage action is clear, unforeseen, and straight – even touching – it isn’t symbolism or telling a story – watching it happen, the spacious proportions for looking and seeing make it easy to breathe and stay open and very soon to realize the exalting strength of the music listening to it section by sectino, a continuous present moment of time for four hours, the energy and force of the score – driving, clear, new, straight – a structure or wall that opens on brick, like a half-step outward or further inward, and with that one step it builds or grows a whole unforeseeable further structure – no telling how the stage action keeps finding room to press through that wall effortlessly, sweetly, and so spaciously – a double structure for artists and audience together, ears and eyes – for all of us in the building together – what an elating evening! (I am speaking here of the preparatory New York rehearsals that I was at.) A Parisian lady exclaimed, “It’s the best opera since Pélléas!” everybody laughed happily – a true likeness without a resemblance.

(Edwin Denby, October 12, 1978, New York City. Text from the back of the CBS recording of Philip Glass & Robert Wilson’s Einstein on the Beach.