Nostalgia for Robert Wilson

The Avignon debut performance of Einstein on the Beach (photograph by Philippe Gras, from Alamy Limited)

I just finished reading the obituary for Robert Wilson that Michael Coveney wrote for The Guardian. Coveney did not waste any time in citing Wilson’s two most memorable collaborators, the choreographer Lucinda Childs and composer Philip Glass. That partnership led to the production of Einstein on the Beach; and it has now been over seventeen years since I wrote my “Nostalgia for EINSTEIN” article on this site. That “opera in four acts,” as it was described by its creators, was first performed in November of 1976 in Avignon; but I did not see it until a revival performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1984.

Ironically, I have not written about Wilson since my Examiner.com days. That involved the release of the Adam’s Passion video at the end of October of 2015. For this production, Wilson shifted from Glass over to Arvo Pärt, setting his staging to four of Pärt’s compositions. At that time I observed that Adam’s Passion was not as “operatic” as Einstein; but my first exposure to Wilson, The King of Spain, performed in 1969 by “Byrd Hoffman and his School of Byrds,” was not particular operatic either! Sadly, my account of that performance for Dance Magazine seems to have eluded Google; so my aforementioned “Nostalgia” article seems to be the best that I can retrieve from the past!

I was glad to see that Coveney’s article provided the most thorough account in print of Wilson’s achievements that I have ever encountered. Wilson was American, but Europe provided him with more (and better) opportunities for him to cultivate his inventiveness. That included a world tour of Einstein in 2012. By that time, I was comfortably settled in the Bay Area, and was able to experience (and enjoy) that production when it came to the University of California at Berkeley for its West Coast premiere at the end of October of that year.

I would like to believe that the Wilson estate now manages a video archive of his productions, but I have no idea when (or even if) the general public will have access to that content!