Einstein on the Beach is a theater piece that defies traditional classification, blending elements of music, art, and performance into a singular experience. It is not a biography of Albert Einstein, nor does it adhere to typical play or opera structures. Instead, it invites audiences to create meaning through its suggestive and immersive spectacle.

Concept and Structure

The piece is the brainchild of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass, with contributions from Christopher Knowles, Lucinda Childs, and Samuel M. Johnson. It is characterized as plotless, allowing audience members to impose their interpretations guided by the aural and visual stimuli presented. Lasting four hours and forty minutes, the performance weaves together music, text, and visuals in a slow evolution that can include prolonged repetition of phrases or sounds, sometimes lasting up to twenty minutes.

The creators reject any definitive interpretative program, insisting that each audience member's experience should be personal and unique. Therefore, a textual or musical synopsis fails to capture the essence of Einstein on the Beach without witnessing the actual performance, where text, music, and spectacle merge seamlessly.

The Knee Plays

The production is structured around five "Knee Plays," metaphorical transitions that link its four acts, each featuring distinct yet intersecting visual motifs—a locomotive, a courtroom, and a spaceship. The Knee Plays and acts are designed to fragment and recombine these motifs musically and visually, creating a continually shifting tableau.

The work opens with the first Knee Play, which begins as the audience arrives. Two women are seated at tables, reciting random numbers and conversing with unseen partners, as a soft three-note melody starts the music. Over fifteen minutes, the Chorus, taking two minutes each to enter the orchestra pit, gradually completes this introductory sequence, ending in a blackout.

Visual and Musical Dynamics

When the scene shifts, a boy on a tower extends a translucent tube, catching spotlight beams that reflect prismatically. As he launches paper airplanes, a dancer clad in tennis shoes and holding a tobacco pipe appears. The Chorus, dressed in white shirts and suspenders reminiscent of Einstein's iconic attire, joins in. Meanwhile, a man at stage right scribbles equations on an invisible blackboard as a full-scale locomotive inches across the stage. This segment is punctuated by light beams and blackouts, altering the visual composition.

In another scene, horizontal beams form a triangle, delineating a space filled with courtroom elements—a bed, a clock without hands, and a judge’s bench. It's a surrealistic courtroom where a witness reads about Mr. Bojangles' "baggy pants," echoing Einstein's own attire. The Einstein figure continuously plays the violin, linking the orchestra with the action on stage.

Progressing Through Acts

The second Knee Play transitions to act 2, where a spaceship appears over a barren stage. Initially depicted through spinning dancers, later productions portrayed precise, mathematical movements. The train image reappears as a Victorian-era passenger train, crossing what seems to be a desolate plain. A Victorian couple emerges, miming a love duet under moonlight, culminating in a dramatic confrontation with a gun before the train vanishes into the distance.

The third Knee Play features the Chorus mimicking steering actions and chanting numbers. The surreal continues with the Chorus brushing their teeth, evoking a famous photograph of Einstein. Act 3 blends trial and prison scenes, featuring a woman defendant who recounts a disturbing supermarket vision with the sole reference to a beach in the play.

Final Acts and Imagery

Act 4 revisits the train motif, now vertical like a building in shadow, with Einstein in a window. As the crowd observes, the scene culminates in an ethereal aria and the defendant's apotheosis. The spaceship interior...

"Einstein on the Beach" stands as a seminal work characterized by its intricate use of prismatic multiplication, a technique that manifests through its complex interplay of images, sounds, and actions on stage. Central to this avant-garde opera are the solfège syllables articulated in a precise tonic rhythm by the Chorus, underpinning the mathematical rigor that defines the piece. The concept of prismatic multiplication, closely associated with the composer Philip Glass, is reflected in both the staging and thematic elements. Horizontal and vertical arrangements of triangulations, squares, and lines of light frequently fragment and reconfigure the stage, spotlighting individual elements and creating a dynamic visual experience.

Wordplay on Glass's surname extends to the physicality of the stage itself, incorporating glass-like materials to enhance thematic resonance. In Act 1, a boy holds a lit tube, while the trial scenes feature illuminated globes on the judge’s bench. Headlights from the trains, underlit glass tables in the fourth Knee Play, and glass elevators and space capsules of Act 4 further this visual motif. These glasslike elements are not mere aesthetic choices; they reinforce the opera's central theme—the fragmentation and reintegration of time, reflecting the idea that while everything is subject to change, relativity remains a constant, with Einstein symbolizing this enduring principle.

Movement, captured through symbols like locomotives, gaslit trains, buses, and spaceships, is depicted diachronically across time, suggesting these vehicles transition through history while retaining their fundamental purpose. The continuity of movement is further symbolized by transformations on stage: a train conductor becomes a bus driver, and train spotlights morph into bus headlights. The locomotive is dramatically repurposed as a skyscraper, illustrating the cycle of progress—a theme explored within the opera—where symbols evolve yet remain constant at their core.

Despite these transformations, the landscape remains starkly minimal, represented through sparse dialogue, haunting music, and the barren plains of Acts 2 and 4. The horizon alluded to in the opera's title suggests an infinite journey. However, this notion of endless progression is an illusion. Within the opera's structure, the multiplication, fragmentation, and permutation of elements may suggest perpetual advancement, but they underscore a philosophical reflection: progress is a mere illusion, yet within this illusion, timeless qualities such as freedom, dignity, and love endure.