An abstract opera showcasing the work of Albert Einstein is being performed in Berlin as part of the Einstein year.

This year marks100 years since the publication of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity as well as the 50th anniversary of his death, and throughout 2005 Germany has been celebrating the life of the man it sent away 70 years ago.

Across the country pictures of Einstein hang on almost every advertisement pillar. Images of his face and two meter tall, red colored sculptures of the letter E dot the grassy sidewalks of Berlin’s boulevards.

Activity programs celebrating Einstein year are packed with every conceivable event surrounding the life and times of perhaps the world’s most famous scientist.

Abstract opera

Einstein on the Beach was composed in 1976 by Philip Glass. The performance aims to be both a museum and a musical theatre in one.

“It certainly is a different kind of opera,” Raquela Sheeran, an opera singer from the US, told EJP.

The audience is inundated with repetitive texts – made up of numbers, syllables and cryptic poetry.

There is no stage – yet everything is the stage, everyone a prop. Everyone, performer and audience member alike, moves around, everywhere - continuously.

Einstein on the Beach is 5 hours of non-stop performing - with no real beginning, no real end and no intermission. What it might mean to the audience is certainly ‘relative’ to what the audience member might have known.

Einstein interest

In his book “Music by Philip Glass”, the American composer commented on his fascination with Einstein.

Glass wrote: "Growing up just after World War II, as I had, it was impossible not to know who he was. The emphatic, if catastrophic, beginnings of the nuclear age had made atomic energy the most widely discussed issue of the day.

“The opera was intended as a metaphorical look at Einstein: scientist, humanist, amateur musician - and the man whose theories, for better and for worse, led to the splitting of the atom.

“Although it is difficult to discern a ‘plot’ in Einstein on the Beach, the climactic scene clearly depicted nuclear holocaust: with its renaissance-pure vocal lines, the blast of amplified instruments, a steady eighth-note pulse and the hysterical chorus chanting numerals as quickly and frantically as possible, it seems to many a musical reflection of the anxious, fin-de-siecle late ’70s,”

The recent Berlin performance of Einstein on the Beach were presented by the Staatsbankberlin/Operaworks.

“The traditional opera is destroyed,” a spokesman for the opera company wrote. “This is a walk-in installation instead.”