Robert Wilson / Philip Glass - Einstein On The Beach

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Philip: Bob was the first
of us to go to Broadway.

It was a short run,
but it was Broadway.

And it was very quickly after that
that we began talking

about a piece,
we didn't know what the piece would be.

We came up with the title
Einstein On The Beach.

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I thought of Einstein as a God of our time.

We know stories about him
and we come to the theatre

sharing something together.

And in a sense there was no need
to tell a story because we already

knew a story.

How this man who,
was a pacifist also,

contributed to the splitting of the atom.

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Speaker: Einstein was a milestone in that
it brought an even wider acclaim

and gave him a whole new audience
and gave opera a whole new audience.

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I think it's the first time in the history
of opera in which the opera music

was composed around the stage sets.

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Woman: I think I've seen Einstein
40 times or something like that.

It's one of the great theatre works
of the 20th century.

If Bob had done nothing but that,
and he's done so much more.

Robert: When we first made Einstein,
I went to the Metropolitan Opera

and asked them if they would do it.

I went to the National Endowment for the Arts
and asked them if they would

support an opera
and they said,

'That sort of thing should not be
in the conventional theatre,

you should do that in a loft downtown.'

So I though, well, let's see.

I think it should be right in our major opera houses,
and everyone was afraid

that we wouldn't get an audience.

There wouldn't be a public that would
come for something like that.

At the Met it wouldn't be for 'their audience.'

I tried everywhere to raise this money.

I went to Paris, France.

Einstein On The Beach,
it was a commission by Michel Guy,

who was the Minister of Culture at the time.

Philip: The word had gone out
that there's something unusual had taken place.

Jane Hermon was in charge
of special events at the Met.

So Jane Hermon came over to see the piece.

She said 'Well, maybe as a special event
we could bring it to the Met.'

Robert: But they wanted me, Robert Wilson,
Byrd Hoffman Foundation

to produce it on their day off.

They would allow me to rent the house
on a Sunday with triple time wages.

I was bankrupt,
I had no money,

I said, 'Let's go for it.'

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Benedict: Phil, Bob,
they were both absolutely dying to see the work

seen by American public.

It's fine for them to have the European public,
but for an American it's not enough.

They want the American,
they want them to recognize their work.

Robert: I sold tickets from $2 to $2,000.

We sold out in two days.

And I put the $2 tickets
next to the $2,000 tickets.

[From Stage]
This court of common pleas is now in session!

Woman: We all went as a family
and we were all quite impressed

and I had never been to the Met before
and we were sitting in like the directors box.

And we all felt very special and important.

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Woman: My father was a heavy smoker,
and Einstein was very long without an intermission.

And my father sat there throughout
the whole thing without getting up

and taking a break, which was amazing.

And then at the end of it when people
were standing and clapping and cheering,

I just looked at him
and there was tears

and such pride in his face
that it was quite amazing.

[Audience Cheering and Clapping]

David: The fact that it was at the Met
was a--really was a downtown going very uptown.

What was I think shocking
for many people was to see the ideas

and the aesthetic
and the--these I guess you could call them

downtown elements that Bob was
embodied in many ways,

done with a professionalism that equal
to anything else on Broadway or at the Met Opera.

That was--it was a way of saying
'We are equal.'

Robert: My father said,
'Why, this is very impressive!'

He said,
'You must be making a lot of money!'

And I said
'No dad, I'm not.'

I said 'I produce this work,
it cost a million dollars to produce it.

I raised $850,000,
I'm $150,000 in debt.'

'$150,000 in debt?'

And I said, 'Yes sir I am.'

And he said, 'Son, I didn't know you
were smart enough to be able

to lose $150,000.'

That's probably the nicest thing
he ever said to me.

And I said, 'Dad, it wasn't easy,
it was a lot of work.'

'It was really hard, you know.'

Philip: We always think of fame
and fortune as of they go together,

but they don't really.

The fame may come first
and the fortune may come

and may not come.

Eventually it can come, perhaps,
but it doesn't always come.

But, uh, Bob did something smarter than--
he stayed in Europe.

The big success of Einstein was in Europe,
there was no one in America

that really wanted to work with Bob or me.