The Anderson Project was the most engaging concert experience I’ve had this season. Lepage is a master of pacing and Yves Jaques did an excellent job of bringing these characters to life. The illusion was so great that there were moments when I forgot that The Anderson Project was a one-man play! The main character’s stories all seem to parallel the two Hans Christian Anderson stories that were expertly imbedded in the play. This tale about loss, desire and unfulfillment is still lingering in my mind days after seeing it.

I left Einstein on the Beach feeling dis-oriented, emotionally spent and buzzing with a strange kind of energy. It was a fantastic experience. I must say that I was a little apprehensive about sitting through a 4.5 hour opera of slowly developing, repetitive scenes with no surface story to follow. Luckily, my interest peeked with some discussion in my “Renegades” class and some personal research. The aspects of the opera that struck me the most were the ways the music and choreography completely warped my temporal senses and how emotional invested I became in an opera with no apparent story. I had sat through 2.5 hours of the opera before I took a break but it felt like only an hour or so. In this kind of meditated state induced by the music and visuals, my eyes tended to wander about the stage, slowly taking all the little nuances in. I found the way that my sense of time was being distorted was very appropriate considering this opera was about Einstein and, in some ways, relativity. I’m not sure if Glass and Wilson had this intention but the overall effect fit the work very well. I was also amazed at how emotionally involved I became with the piece. The last knee play was particularly striking.

I am very happy that I was able to experience “Einstein on the Beach”, a part of history unfolding in front of my eyes.