“Almost nothing about what composer Philip Glass and director Robert Wilson put onstage was opera. Einstein has no narrative. Einstein has no Einstein, even though a great many onstage are dressed in the iconic image of frizzy-haired scientist. Einstein on the Beach has no beach. … Everything about [the piece] seemed new and revelatory in 1976. … When the Metropolitan Opera presented the touring production that fall after an ecstatic European tour, in which every seat at every performance was sold out, the company hadn’t performed a new American work in decades. Here was a new beginning for opera in America.” – Los Angeles Times