Widely credited as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the 20th century, the opera Einstein on the Beach launched director Robert Wilson and composer Philip Glass to international success when it was first produced in Avignon, France in 1976.

In this video, featuring Einstein’s original creative team, Philip Glass remembers the first night of Einstein, Robert Wilson sits next to Arthur Miller, and Lucinda Childs recollects the “Supermarket Speech.”

Robert Wilson fans will have much to do in Ann Arbor this winter. Einstein on the Beach, a screening of Absolute Wilson, and Video 50 at UMMA, an exhibit of Wilson’s “smaller-scale” experiments in video, is “classic surrealism.”

What’s a renegade to you? How do you know when a work is truly game-changing, experimental or history-making? Give us your answer in 7 words to enter to win tickets!

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UMS first presented Handel’s Messiah in December of 1879. Over several weeks, we released a series of Messiah Memories webisodes from everyone involved over the years. We couldn’t resist releasing these staff bloopers.