Why I defend Bianca Jagger

Yes, I will defend Bianca Jagger taking photos during Einstein on the Beach. Because it was Einstein on the Beach. Indeed, I'd say she got a lot more from the piece than the snotty critics around her did, some who clearly did not know the piece. Most reviews completely missed the point of the piece, which redefined all the usual parameters of opera. Glass and Wilson were experimenting with a new genre before most anyone else. Miss that, and miss the whole point of the exercise.

Indeed, sitting up in the balcony, I could see many flashes iin different parts of the building and thought they were a kind of performance art, a perfectly valid extension of the idea of Einstein as celebrity admired by millions who haven't a clue what he really did. So a celebrity like Bianca Jagger has every right to "participate".

Besides, Bianca J was enjoying herself and engaging with the piece, which is more than can be said of some of the superficial writers who went because it was free, without a clue about composer or concept. Interesting that those most opposed to Bianca are those who know least about the work itself. Bianca's real. So, too, Rupert Christiansen who loathed it. (They should have sent Ivan Hewett who has a better handle on Glass).  Both had genuine responses, far more sincere than those who just follow received opinion and pretend. It's not what you think that counts, but why. My response is HERE, written without programme notes but with general background.

In any case, Einstein on the Beach is conceptual. It's stream of consciousness, like a dream with images that aren't processed. Philip Glass's music is like modern society, where we're bombarded with technology and processes out of our control. That's why the onus is on the observer - a participant - to decide when to come or go, when to doze, etc. You don't "need" to take in every note or word. Or non-word.  Hence the repetitions and irrelevancies. As in the real world, you don't learn til you filter. So Hooray for Bianca, reacting like a human being, and taking souvenirs to preserve the moment.  [Now it emerges that she is a close friend of Glass and Wilson, who have supported her actions. If the composer and director are happy, why should critics who don't know the piece or the ideas behind it object? Or perhaps it's too much for big egos to accept that a woman might know more about than they do?]


But not all music is Einstein on the Beach. Tonight, I was at a George Benjamin concert where the music is so refined that every microtone counts.  A friend mentioned someone texting throughout, which was distracting. So he asked the person to stop, but other people turned on him instead. What's the point of going to music and not listen? And if you don't care, why spoil things for others? This boorishness is getting too common. Not long ago, at the Royal Opera House, a man started sneering loudly even as the Overture began. He'd come to get his kicks from being nasty: no interest in the opera itself. More money than sense. What kind of person needs to prove something by wrecking things for others? As my friend discovered at George Benjamin, if you stand up to boors they may call you a snob or worse, just because you dare care about what you listen to.

Is it "elitist" to listen these days? Two years ago, Alex Ross decreed that audiences should applaud when they wanted. But the whole point of going to performance is listening. Pay attention and respect that others around you might want to be paying attention too. It's as simple as that. Part of the problem is that concert going is perceived as consumer product, not as a form of enlightenment.  Buying a ticket does not "buy" an artistic experience. It's only when you engage with what you're hearing that you get full value. For most people these days, it's enough that they can tweet their pals or whatever, and prove something without having to actually particpate emotionally. Bianca Jagger's wrong to disrupt others, but her heart is in the right place. And she doesn't disrupt George Benjamin.

photo: Andreas Schipers

Philip Glass Einstein on the Beach Barbican London

How does Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach shape up, thirty-seven years after it premiered?  At the Barbican Theatre, London, we got a chance to hear how Glass and director Robert Wilson present it now. As theatre, it's stunning, even though the escalators didn't work at all and the cloud effects were less than remarkable. As music? It makes us realize just how far Glass has since progressed. Despite the glorious theatrics, Einstein on the Beach is  redolent of the 1970's.

Fantastic theatre, though  Pairs and parallels, symmetries and counter symmetries. The dance sequences show the patterns in the music in "pure" form, but the staging overall is very well thought out, expressing the musical logic. Breath taking visual effects. Beautifully luminous sets. Lots of tunes, too, which may have helped make  the piece (relatively) popular. The long saxophone riff, for example, and the fugue for electronic organ. The tunes serve as familiar landmarks in the amorphous confluences of Glass's music. Famously, he composed with a formal structure in mind, based on images Wilson suggested

But with too-frequent snatches of pop songs that weren't that good to start with, the whole is uncomfortably  close to quasi-musical. Perhaps once that was necessary, to dispel the idea that new music is difficult, and to establish the idea that Einstein was trendy, for a generation that listened to Carole King and  made Mr Bojangles top of the hit parade. Fortunately, the Barbican audience seemed too young to have memories associated with 70's hip values. One day maybe these songs will just be quaint curiosities. At present, they distract, adding layers of meaning which are interesting but distract from the figure of Einstein himself. Nowadays, Glass is writing with much more discipline. Witness In the Penal Colony, staged last year at the Linbury, where music and meaning are totally integrated. Read my review of the subsequent CD, which shows how Glass's oscillating cadences express the psychosis in the plot.

In Einstein on the Beach, the repetitions seem to exist for their own sake, continuing far too long after they have made their point. Perhaps Glass and Wilson are describing mathematical calculations, which can be mechanical. But at Einstein's level, mathematics is conceptual.. Mathematicians wax rhapsodic about the "elegance" of inspired proofs, not about mindless number crunching. As an "ideas" drama, Einstein on the Beach isn't especially coherent. Einstein appears marginally, sawing a violin, possibly listening to Bach. Several different references to writing on blackboards, including the striking image of a  figure in a redbrick tower, witha mechanical hand that moves up and down. But what matters isn't the blackboard but what the ideas represent. Einstein on the Beach isn't nearly as intellectually rigorous as Satyagraha where Mahatma Gandhi's radical ideas are treated seriously and understood. (read more here and here). Perhaps the pointillism of Glass's music suggests the infinity of the universe, but it doesn't deal with the implications of Einstein's theories. If "I feel the earth move" stands for the Atom Bomb, it's pretty shallow.

Arguably, Einstein on the Beach isn't about Einstein and his ideas so much as an experiment. The work flows like stream of consciousness, ideas glimpsed as if in a dream, their meaning obscure. This is good, because Wilson knows how visual images can mean many different things at the same time : it's up to the onlooker to process and interpret. Visual literacy is an undervalued skill, which many don't know even exists. The first few hours are thrilling exercises in reading images, almost too much to take in. But the piece takes itself too seriously, labouring almost identical scenes and sounds til they outstay their welcome. You can walk in and out and doze (which is useful because the images work well when your mind in in zen-like receptive mode). Better, though, to depend less on formal structure and more on inherent drama. Einstein on the Beach is important because it's a first step in Glass's evolution as dramatist. Listen to Glass's  more recent work, like In The Penal Colony (easier to cope audio-only than the brilliant, but distressing staging). Look forward to The Perfect American, Glass's latest character study, based loosely on Walt Disney, premiering also in the Barbican Theatre in June 2013, under the auspices of the ENO.  But get to the Barbican now and experience this amazing staging, with idiomatic performances.

New Greek by Young Turk Turnage

Vintage Turnage returns! Music Theatre Wales, which produced the shocking Philip Glass In the Penal Colony last year, is reviving Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek. It's a "re-working of the Oedipus myth for the age of discontent".

Commissioned by Hans Werner Henze in 1988, it's an angry protest against Thatcher's Britain. What followed Thatcher, however, makes anything she did seem oddly innocent in comparison,  even selfless, if misguided. At least she read policy briefings and didn't deliberately invent things to please George W. Invading the Falklands was a no-brainer compared with invading Iraq, Afghanistan etc. Greek was the piece that helped make Turnage's name, so it will be interesting to compare it with Turnage's new Anna Nicole, premiering next month at the Royal Opera House. The inspiration for that was Beyoncé.

The New Greek by the Young Turk Turnage is being directed by the same team who did In the Penal Colony, headed by director Michael McCarthy. Simon Banham designs and Michael Rafferty conducts. On past form this should be good. Music Theatre Wales is small, but impressive. Singers include Marcus Farnworth, Sally Silver and Louise Winter. The tour starts in Brecon, Wales, on 2nd July then moves to the Cheltenham Festival on 7th July, and thence to the Buxton Festival. Possible London dates in the autumn? Incidentally, Music Theatre Wales is working together with Philip Glass on a new piece based on Kafka The Trial. If In the Penal Colony was anything to go by, The Trial from this team should be gripping.