Einstein on the Beach is an opera in four acts, composed by Philip Glass and directed by theatrical producer Robert Wilson. The opera eschews traditional narrative in favor of a formalist approach based on structured spaces laid out by Wilson in a series of storyboards. The music was written "in the spring, summer and fall of 1975". Glass recounts the collaborative process: "I put [Wilson’s notebook of sketches] on the piano and composed each section like a portrait of the drawing before me. The score was begun in the spring of 1975 and completed by the following November, and those drawings were before me all the time." The premiere took place on July 25, 1976, at the Avignon Festival in France. The opera contains writings by Christopher Knowles, Samuel M. Johnson and Lucinda Childs. It is Glass's first and longest opera score, taking approximately five hours in full performance without intermission; given the length, the audience is permitted to enter and leave as desired.
Bent Sørensen is a Danish composer. He won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 2018 for L'isola della Città (2016).
Gian Paolo Chiti is an Italian composer and pianist.
Émile Louis Fortuné Pessard was a French composer.
Amel Brahim-Djelloul is a soprano opera singer and concert recitalist. She is Algerian with Berber origins.
Beat Furrer is a Swiss-born Austrian composer and conductor. He has served as professor of composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz since 1991. He won the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2018.
Marie Heilbron was a Belgian operatic soprano, particularly associated with the French repertory, creator of Jules Massenet's quintessential French heroine Manon.
Salvatore Fisichella is an Italian operatic tenor known for his roles in bel canto operas, especially those of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini. He has been recognized for the ease and vocal brilliance of his singing, and for having sung more of the leading roles in Bellini's operas than any other 20th century tenor.
Nicky Spence is a Scottish operatic tenor who performs in opera, oratorio and recital in both the UK and internationally.
Piotr Lachert was a Polish composer, pianist and teacher.
Adriana Hölszky is a Romanian-born German music educator, composer and pianist who has been living in Germany since 1976.
Janet Maguire is an American composer residing in Venice, Italy.
Svend Nielsen is a modern Danish composer. He was a student of Vagn Holmboe, Finn Høffding and Per Nørgård. His inspirations are Nørgård, Ravel and Debussy.
Elena Langer is a Russian-born British composer of operas and other contemporary classical music. Her work has been performed at the Royal Opera House, Zurich Opera, Carnegie Hall, Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre. She studied piano and composition at the Gnessin School in Moscow and composition at the Moscow Conservatoire; in 1999 she moved to London and studied composition at the Royal College of Music (1999–2000) with Julian Anderson and the Royal Academy of Music (2001–03) with Simon Bainbridge.
Georges Lonque was a Belgian composer, music teacher, conductor and violinist. His father was Séraphin Lonque and his younger brother was Armand Lonque. All three of them composed music.
Jules-Louis-Olivier Métra, was a 19th-century French composer and conductor.
Joseph-Théodore-Désiré Barbot, born in Toulouse on 12 April 1824, died in Paris on 1 January 1879, was a French operatic tenor. He is most notable for creating the title role in Charles Gounod's opera "Faust".
Det guddomelige Tivoli is a 1982 opera by Per Nørgård. The opera portrays the schizophrenic Swiss artist Adolf Wölfli (1864-1930) from his harsh upbringing in Switzerland to the asylum where Wölfli spent 30 years while producing his artworks. Originally composed in Danish the opera was recorded on disc for the first time in 2008 at a performance by Stadttheater Bern in German.
