Philip Glass - Einstein on the Beach
This work revolves around three recurring visual images, each of which has its corresponding music. There are trains, recalling the toy trains Einstein played with as a child and the trains he later used as analogies to illustrate his theory of relativity. A trial scene that includes a bed seems to resonate with the awesome implications of Einstein’s discoveries. Did he ponder, while in bed at night, the threat of atomic catastrophe that his work had helped unleash? Might he have imagined himself, or modern science, on trial? The third image, representing, perhaps, the potential for liberation and transcendence that Einstein also unleashed, is a spaceship.