Einstein on the Beach, the revival of the 1976 collaboration between stage director Robert Wilson, choreographer Lucinda Childs and composer Philip Glass hosted last week-end by Cal Performances, managed to sell out Zellerbach Hall three times. Not bad at all for a four hour and twenty minutes opera with no story, no specific characters, no beach, non-sensical lyrics, no intermission and no help from the baseball Gods: only Friday night's performance wasn't scheduled against the World Series. However, because it would be cruel to let people squirm in their seats with no exit for this long, you could come and go as you pleased, be it bathroom break or quick score check.

How did they manage, though? Einstein comes with a glorious reputation: it's the work that launched a few careers, and that of Wilson, Childs and Glass in particular. The story is well known: the show was first commissioned for the Avignon Festival, a yearly theatrical event in Southern France and for a few other European locations. Its creative team decided to not only bring it back to these shores, but do it with a bang: they rented the Met Opera for two nights and sold it out (at a big loss, marketing does have a cost), creating a huge sensation on the 1976 New-York scene whose ripples we still feel; Glass, Wilson and Childs became big hits, with the careers we now know. The original creators are still behind this new production and took a bow at the end, even though they don't perform in it anymore: Glass used to be in the orchestral pit, Wilson and Childs used to dance and act.