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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Mark Brown North of England correspondent

Five-hour avant garde Philip Glass opera among ENO’s Manchester plans

A modern arts venue with people drinking and talking in a courtyard outside
Aviva Studios, opened last year, will be the venue for the rarely produced Einstein on the Beach. Photograph: Mark Waugh/Alamy

A rarely produced, interval-free five-hour opera hailed as revolutionary when it was first performed in 1976 is to be part of English National Opera’s first three years of plans for Greater Manchester.

Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s plotless Einstein on the Beach baffled some opera-goers when it was first seen in 1976. But many also saw it as visionary. The New York Times critic Clive Barnes said it was “bizarre, occasionally boring, yet always intermittently beautiful”, adding: “You will never forget it, even if you hate it.”

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