compositions

Monsters of Grace

A digital opera in three dimensions for ensemble and soloists

1997

70′

Opera by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson. Lyrics by Jalaluddin Rumi, translated and adapted from the original by Coleman Barks.

CAST:
S, Mz, 2Bar 3 Keyboards, fl (bfl, cl, ssx), tsx (ssx, asx), fl (pic, bfl, ssx)

COMMISSION:
Co-commissioned by UCLA Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles, California (USA); Arizona State University Public Events, Tempe, Arizona (USA); The Barbican Centre, London (UK); The Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, New York (USA); Change Performing Arts/Festival sul Novecento, Palermo (Italy); Festival Castell de Peralada, Catalunya (Spain); Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam (The Netherlands); Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, OR (USA); The Society for the Performing Arts, Houston, TX (USA) and Wolf Trap Foundation, Vienna, Virginia (USA).

PREMIERE:
April 15, 1998, Royce Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles by the PGE

NOTES:
Over the last three years , Bob Wilson and I have been meeting to work on a new theater piece, Monsters of Grace. Since Einstein on the Beach in 76, we have come together on several occasions to make new work, but unlike those projects, with this present work, we have had a real opportunity to sit together and engage in a new world of ideas. Of course inage, music and structure are at the root of what we are thinking. We are, moreover, addressing a challenge of a new technology and its impact of a developing artistic view. It is fair to say that as an on going process, it is still fluid, elusive, and for us, full of surprise.

— Philip Glass, 1997

PUBLISHER:
Dunvagen Music Publishers

AVAILABLE SCORES
Monsters of Grace at Wise Music Classical

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Tara Hugo Sings Philip Glass
The Orphée Suite for Piano on Orange Mountain Music

CATEGORIES
Opera