On the Beach

At the webpage of NING the following, among other things, is written about On the Beach:

"The music performance ensemble NING does its own version of one of the major opera successes of the post-war age: Einstein on the Beach (1976). The piece was originally a monumental audio/visual experience, with Philip Glass' suggestive, repetitive loop music to Robert Wilson's giant theatre tableaus - as a whole, a free associative approach to Albert Einstein's life and work, and the consequences his work has had for the world.

The title of the opera is a reference to the novel On the beach (1957) by Nevil Shute (in Norwegian called Den siste bredd):

World War III is over and all life in the Northern Hemisphere is blanketed out. The last living people are refugees from a radioactive cloud on the move to the south... towards the last bank.

NING attacks opera tradition, Albert Einstein and On the Beach with a site-specific version. The theme is no less interesting today; science provides us with a constant stream of new moral challenges parallel with new opportunities. Scientists tell us that the nuclear threat is no lesser than it was during the 1960es, perhaps the opposite, and an earth quake in Japan again puts the fear of the nuclear atop the agenda.

At the same time, in light of the marble colossus in Bjørvika, there is good reason to discuss the use of resources and size in art: Does opera have to be great to be great?

NING chooses to create an in every way small opera; something between a concert and an installation - an open situation lasting for a few hours, in which music, text and performers are available, shifting between roles as musicians, reciters and conversation partners. We bring beach chairs, sound systems and instruments and settle on the opera beach. Philip Glass' minimalist eternity music and the nuclear issue are present, as is the central question of Nevil Shute's novel: How do you use your life when you know there are only months - or weeks - left? The best thing may be to have a view towards the ocean and the horizon; to wait on the beach...

The first work-in-progress version was performed by the water's edge at The Norwegian Opera in Oslo in September 2009. New work-in-progress the summer of 2010."

The company directs thanks to Elinor Ström, Rasmus Jørgensen and Kristin Norderval.

Supported by Arts Council Norway. 

Source:

NING, ningensemble.com, 08.10.2012, http://www.ningensemble.com/index2.html