Music: The Opera As Science Fiction

Philip Glass turns to psychodrama, part Freud, part Kafka

Is there a busier contemporary composer than Philip Glass? The prolific minimalist seems to be everywhere these days, churning out operas, film scores and instrumental music with the tireless industry of an 18th century Kapellmeister. Unlike Haydn, though, Glass has no Prince Esterhazy to keep him in livery, only his appetite for work. In May his The Fall of the House of Usher, based on Poe's grisly tale, opened in Cambridge, Mass. Seven weeks later, the Houston Grand Opera premiered his operatic setting of Doris Lessing's novel The Making of the Representative for Planet 8. Now, and most spectacularly, comes 1000...

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