Philip Glass and Circus Days and Nights

Earlier this month, I watched a new opera by Philip Glass, streamed live from the Malmö Opera in Sweden. Called Circus Days and Nights, it's a remarkable combination of opera and circus performance. Glass has used circus motifs in his operas before, r example, jugglers in recent performances of Satyagraha and Akhnaten, but in this case, the circus is the opera. 

The LA Times has published an article that looks at the opera and how it came to be and puts it into the wider context of Glass's career. 

The circus tinge to Glass’ score, which is written for a small ensemble and a dramatic accordionist, Minna Weulander, brings to mind the composer’s early studies with French composer Darius Milhaud, and especially Milhaud’s popular surrealist Cocteau ballet score, “Le Boeuf sur le Toit” (The Ox on the Roof). The Paris premiere featured circus clowns.

Glass also notably references his operatic start. Like “Einstein on the Beach,” an opera in the form of cycles, there is no real drama, just, in this case, a deepening insight into the meaning of the circus and its representation of life as repeating cycles. The opera ends where it begins, with the opening lines. Just as the circus pulls up tent, moves on and begins again.

“The traveling circus is always in motion, even when it seems to be standing still,” is another of Lax’s memorable lines that finds its way into Hwang’s libretto. The opposite is also true with Glass’ late-style music. There are parts of the new score that sound remarkably fresh, and there are patches of note-spinning, the noodling he has done a million times.

This is no place to dismiss the noodling, as it too often has been dismissed. It accompanies circus acts and operates on the level of necessary trust and love. It trusts that music need distract neither performer in a great acrobatic or juggling act nor the audience. Everyone and everything in a circus is useful and necessary.

I enjoyed Circus Days and Nights. Musically, it's not Glass's best work but as a piece of musical theatre, it's immensely entertaining. I expect it to be very popular if it ever gets performed in North America.