"Einstein on the Beach" has become Glass' most famous work. The composer presented the first performance of the opera (in a concert hall), at his own expense, in the 1960s and 1970s. He earned a living as a taxi driver in New York. At that time, minimalism was not very popular with the general public. Glass described the first performances of his Philip Glass Ensemble like this: "Six people attended our first concert, two of them were friends and one was my mother."
After the premiere of "Einstein," everything changed. Glass was flooded with orders from leading opera houses around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera and La Scala. Soon, he became the most-performed opera composer of the 20th century.
"Einstein on the Beach" is a legendary and iconic piece of innovative theater. It explores scientific research (the theory of relativity and nuclear weapon production), which was an unexpected theme for the theater, allowing the creators to experiment with creating a unique aesthetic experience full of visual and plastic effects. The piece bears little resemblance to traditional opera, as it was composed for The Philip Glass Ensemble without soloists, only a small chorus that sings meaningless syllables to the rhythm of the music. The story is read by a narrator, and the role of Einstein has no words - it was written for a violin. The main themes of the play are a train, a trial, and a spaceship floating above the Earth. Einstein on the Beach is the first opera in Philip Glass' Portraits trilogy, followed by Satyagraha and Akhenaten. These operas are dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi and Akhenaten, respectively, and all three have no plot but rather a symbolic set of episodes that depict a portrait of each historical figure and their ideas that radically changed the world around them.
