US opera legend Robert Wilson dies at 83

Celebrated US director, Robert Wilson, who revolutionised stage and opera, died on Thursday at the age of 83, his management said.

“Robert Wilson died peacefully today in Water Mill, New York, at the age of 83, after a brief but acute illness,” said a statement issued on his website.

It said he worked right up until the end.

Wilson’s productions of original works as well as traditional repertoire pieces were hugely popular wherever they were shown.

But it was in France where he was best known.

It was the French who gave him a “home,” Wilson told AFP in 2021.

It was in 1976 that Wilson was propelled onto the international stage with “Einstein on The Beach,” a nearly five-hour opera staged several times since its creation, with music by Philip Glass.

“Einstein on the Beach” broke all the conventions of classical opera — there is no linear narrative but rather it draws on themes related to Einstein’s life.

It does not aim to explain the theory of relativity but to convey the upheaval introduced by the notion of space-time, notably through dance.

Wilson’s trademarks included minimalist aesthetics, body language influenced by Asian theatrical forms, and lighting effects evoking dreamlike worlds.

His love affair with France began with “Deafman Glance” (“Le Regard du Sourd”) — his first success — a “silent” seven-hour show presented at the Nancy Festival in 1971, and later in Paris.

The show was born out of a real-world incident when in 1967, Wilson saw a 13-year-old Black teenager, Raymond Andrews, being beaten in the street by a police officer. He realized the child was deaf and mute and eventually adopted him.

Wilson, also a visual artist, had a string of collaborations including with choreographer Andy de Groat, Tom Waits, Isabelle Huppert for “Orlando” by Virginia Woolf, Lady Gaga for video portraits of her at the Louvre, and ballet legend Mikhail Baryshnikov.

“While facing his diagnosis with clear eyes and determination, he still felt compelled to keep working and creating right up until the very end,” the website piece announcing his death said.

“His works for the stage, on paper, sculptures and video portraits, as well as The Watermill Center, will endure as Robert Wilson’s artistic legacy.”

Memorials will be held for Wilson at time and locations yet to be announced.

Born to a lawyer in October 4, 1941, in Waco, Texas, Wilson was performing his own plays in the family garage by the age of 12, but recalls being bottom of the class at school.

He was cured of a severe stutter thanks to a psychotherapist who worked with dance.

In his twenties, he landed in New York but hated what he saw in theaters and instinctively gravitated toward the American avant-garde: Andy Warhol, John Cage, choreographers George Balanchine, and especially Martha Graham.

He relished nurturing emerging talent, and in 1992, created the Watermill Center near New York.