Susanne Kennedy / M. Selg / P. Glass

Stage director Susanne Kennedy and visual artist Markus Selg tackle the monumental “anti-opera” Einstein on the Beach, revisited as a dizzying visual maelstrom. A psychedelic recreation, carried by high-caliber performers.

Forty-seven years after it creation Einstein on the Beach takes on a novel shape. The fine-tuned staging imagined by Robert Wilson in order to embrace Philip Glass’s repetitive music motifs is answered today by a profusion of explosive colors and movements. Video projections mark the passage of time on a sandy post-apocalyptic landscape where performers practice strange ceremonials and shamanic dances. The audience can venture out as well, while narrators willfully roam the venue. It’s one of the personal and daring touches of this reinterpretation imagined by Susanne Kennedy. She also took some liberties with the original text, cutting some parts and adding others. Philip Glass’s partition only shines more powerfully, carried by the vocal ensembles Basler Madrigalisten and Phoenix Basel, led by André de Ridder. A rare occasion to (re)discover a masterpiece of the 20th century.