WEBVTT
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🎵 Music 🎵
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Philip: Bob was the first
of us to go to Broadway.
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It was a short run,
but it was Broadway.
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And it was very quickly after that
that we began talking
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about a piece,
we didn't know what the piece would be.
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We came up with the title
Einstein On The Beach.
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🎵 Violin Music 🎵
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I thought of Einstein as a God of our time.
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We know stories about him
and we come to the theatre
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sharing something together.
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And in a sense there was no need
to tell a story because we already
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knew a story.
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How this man who,
was a pacifist also,
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contributed to the splitting of the atom.
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🎵 Loud Fast Music 🎵
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Speaker: Einstein was a milestone in that
it brought an even wider acclaim
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and gave him a whole new audience
and gave opera a whole new audience.
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🎵 Fast Violin Music 🎵
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I think it's the first time in the history
of opera in which the opera music
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was composed around the stage sets.
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🎵 Fast Violin Music 🎵
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Woman: I think I've seen Einstein
40 times or something like that.
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It's one of the great theatre works
of the 20th century.
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If Bob had done nothing but that,
and he's done so much more.
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Robert: When we first made Einstein,
I went to the Metropolitan Opera
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and asked them if they would do it.
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I went to the National Endowment for the Arts
and asked them if they would
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support an opera
and they said,
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'That sort of thing should not be
in the conventional theatre,
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you should do that in a loft downtown.'
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So I though, well, let's see.
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I think it should be right in our major opera houses,
and everyone was afraid
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that we wouldn't get an audience.
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There wouldn't be a public that would
come for something like that.
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At the Met it wouldn't be for 'their audience.'
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I tried everywhere to raise this money.
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I went to Paris, France.
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Einstein On The Beach,
it was a commission by Michel Guy,
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who was the Minister of Culture at the time.
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Philip: The word had gone out
that there's something unusual had taken place.
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Jane Hermon was in charge
of special events at the Met.
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So Jane Hermon came over to see the piece.
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She said 'Well, maybe as a special event
we could bring it to the Met.'
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Robert: But they wanted me, Robert Wilson,
Byrd Hoffman Foundation
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to produce it on their day off.
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They would allow me to rent the house
on a Sunday with triple time wages.
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I was bankrupt,
I had no money,
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I said, 'Let's go for it.'
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🎵 Opera Singing 🎵
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Benedict: Phil, Bob,
they were both absolutely dying to see the work
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seen by American public.
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It's fine for them to have the European public,
but for an American it's not enough.
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They want the American,
they want them to recognize their work.
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Robert: I sold tickets from $2 to $2,000.
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We sold out in two days.
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And I put the $2 tickets
next to the $2,000 tickets.
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[From Stage]
This court of common pleas is now in session!
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Woman: We all went as a family
and we were all quite impressed
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and I had never been to the Met before
and we were sitting in like the directors box.
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And we all felt very special and important.
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🎵 Loud Fast Music 🎵
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Woman: My father was a heavy smoker,
and Einstein was very long without an intermission.
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And my father sat there throughout
the whole thing without getting up
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and taking a break, which was amazing.
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And then at the end of it when people
were standing and clapping and cheering,
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I just looked at him
and there was tears
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and such pride in his face
that it was quite amazing.
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[Audience Cheering and Clapping]
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David: The fact that it was at the Met
was a--really was a downtown going very uptown.
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What was I think shocking
for many people was to see the ideas
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and the aesthetic
and the--these I guess you could call them
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downtown elements that Bob was
embodied in many ways,
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done with a professionalism that equal
to anything else on Broadway or at the Met Opera.
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That was--it was a way of saying
'We are equal.'
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Robert: My father said,
'Why, this is very impressive!'
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He said,
'You must be making a lot of money!'
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And I said
'No dad, I'm not.'
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I said 'I produce this work,
it cost a million dollars to produce it.
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I raised $850,000,
I'm $150,000 in debt.'
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'$150,000 in debt?'
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And I said, 'Yes sir I am.'
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And he said, 'Son, I didn't know you
were smart enough to be able
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to lose $150,000.'
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That's probably the nicest thing
he ever said to me.
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And I said, 'Dad, it wasn't easy,
it was a lot of work.'
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'It was really hard, you know.'
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Philip: We always think of fame
and fortune as of they go together,
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but they don't really.
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The fame may come first
and the fortune may come
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and may not come.
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Eventually it can come, perhaps,
but it doesn't always come.
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But, uh, Bob did something smarter than--
he stayed in Europe.
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The big success of Einstein was in Europe,
there was no one in America
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that really wanted to work with Bob or me.