The Best of Philip Glass' Operas

I've been a fan of Philip Glass' music ever since I first heard it sometime in the early 1980s. I've seen him perform in various settings at least half a dozen times (I've lost track). Over the last few years I've been lucky enough to see his "Portrait" trilogy of operas performed live and in simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera.

Glass is an incredibly prolific composer but I didn't realize how many operas he's written until I saw this article in the New York Times that attempts to pick some of the best of the roughly 30 he's written. They've restricted the list to compostions after Akhnaten, the last of his Portrait triliogy, first performed in 1983.

His sound, with its flowing arpeggios and churning rhythms, has remained easily identifiable through the decades. Yet Mr. Glass’s best works for the stage — including the eight below, written between 1987 and 2014 — have managed to color that trademark style in fresh hues. Each has been recorded on his Orange Mountain Music label, whose CD editions also include librettos.

It's a wide-ranging list and although I might quibble with a couple of the choices, it serves as a good introduction to Glass' later operatic works,  although I don't think there's anything there that compares with the beauty or majesty of Satyagraha or Akhnaten. The Times has thoughtfully embedded Spotify playlists into the article so you can judge for yourself.