The 4 1/2-hour avant-garde opera Einstein on the Beach was conceived after a performance of a 12 1/2-hour avant-garde piece, director Robert Wilson's Life and Times of Josef Stalin. Composer Philip Glass, long an admirer of Wilson, suggested the two collaborate on a musical work for the stage. During subsequent meetings Albert Einstein became the indirect subject of the new work, simply because his image appealed to Glass and Wilson. They soon developed an unusual visual scheme to span their four acts: every scene would be focused around either a train, a trial, or a field with a spaceship. While Glass worked on the complex musical score, Wilson choreographed the dances. Both saw the work as a "portrait opera" in which images associated with Einstein would gradually accumulate into a picture of him, without the use of plot or narrative structure. They wanted the...