Philip Glass’ journey into the heart of cinema is defined by a series of radical interventions that redefine the relationship between the image and the score. While he is celebrated for his original scores—such as the evocative, Oscar-nominated music for The Hours, the dramatic themes of The Truman Show, and the groundbreaking investigative pulse of The Thin Blue Line—his most provocative work involves a live, multimedia dialogue with films that already existed—either true masterpieces of the silent era or early sound films that he chose to “silence” and rebuild from the ground up.
This fascination with the mechanics of the screen began most notably with Koyaanisqatsi (1982). In a move that turned the traditional filmmaking process on its head, Glass and his collaborator Godfrey Reggio did the reverse of the standard industry practice: the music was written first. Instead of the composer chasing the edit, Reggio used Glass’ rhythmic, pulsing score as the foundation, editing the film’s iconic time-lapse imagery to match the music.
Building on the success of this structural inversion, Glass’ next innovation was to take existing iconic cult films and treat them as if they were silent relics. By stripping away the original dialogue and sound, he transformed cinematic history into a libretto, reconstructing the films as live operatic events where the screen provides the narrative and the musicians add a layer of extra richness and emotional interpretation.
Here is Glass explaining his new art form:
Cinematic Opera: Re-voicing Visionary Films
The centerpiece of this live reimagining is the Jean Cocteau trilogy. Here, Glass engaged in a radical form of deconstruction: taking a classic film and stripping away its original soundtrack entirely—including the dialogue—to replace it with a live operatic performance.
La Belle et la Bête (1946)
In the performance of the 1946 masterpiece La Belle et la Bête, the film is treated not as a finished cinematic product, but as a visual libretto. During these shows, the Philip Glass Ensemble provides a dense, shimmering orchestral floor while four singers stand on stage, literalizing the subtext of the characters on screen.
The technical challenge is immense: the singers must synchronize their performance precisely with the lip movements of the actors in the projected film. By removing the original French dialogue and replacing it with live voices, Glass transforms the theater into a space where the screen and the stage merge. This approach forces the viewer to see the film as a series of dream-like sequences, turning a mid-century sound film back into a work of visual poetry that is only given a voice through the live ensemble’s presence.
Orphée (1950) and Les Enfants Terribles (1950)
As the trilogy continues with Orphée and the dance-opera Les Enfants Terribles, the live element becomes even more critical. In Les Enfants Terribles, the use of three pianos creates a percussive, claustrophobic atmosphere that mirrors the sibling protagonists’ insular world. When performed live, the physical presence of the pianists and singers adds a layer of human fragility to the stark, black-and-white cinematography. The audience is not just watching a film; they are witnessing a live translation of 20th-century French avant-garde into the immediate present.
Beyond the “Broken Record”
To some, Glass’ music might initially sound like a “broken record”—a monotonous series of repetitions that never seem to end. However, this surface-level observation misses the radical innovation at the heart of his work. Glass’ style is not a lack of movement, but a fusion of Eastern rhythmic structures and Western classical tradition.
Influenced deeply by his studies with Ravi Shankar and his travels through India, Glass moved away from the Western preoccupation with narrative “climax” and “resolution.” Instead, he embraced the additive and cyclic rhythms of Indian classical music. What sounds like repetition is actually a process of constant, subtle evolution—small shifts in meter and harmony that create a trance-like state of heightened awareness.
Glass is a composer of unprecedented innovation; Satyagraha (1979) is another example of his ability to radically experiment, perhaps the only major opera written entirely in Sanskrit. This work, based on the life of Mahatma Gandhi and the start of his passive resistance as a young attorney in South Africa, demonstrates Glass’ ability to marry the ancient linguistic traditions of the Bhagavad Gita with a forward-looking musical language completely invented by Glass. By utilizing these cyclical, meditative structures to tell the story of “truth-force,” Glass proved that his minimalist techniques were capable of carrying immense historical and spiritual weight.
Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts, a 2007 documentary by Scott Hicks, is an excellent overview of Glass’ artistic journey.
Relentless Reinvention
Glass often observes that audiences attending these cinematic operas are initially struck by a profound sense of confusion. They are confronted with a sensory overload: a massive projection, a live ensemble, and opera singers standing in the foreground. They don’t know where to look—at the film, the performers on stage, or the musicians in the pit. However, a transformation occurs during the performance. By the end, the audience arrives at a moment of sudden clarity, realizing that the character on the screen and the singer on the stage are, in fact, the same person. The barrier between media dissolves.
In an era where the bar for artistic achievement often feels lower and lower—where “performance” is frequently reduced to wearing a ridiculous costume and strutting on a stage to say something superficially shocking—Glass’ work reminds us of what true innovation looks like. His willingness to challenge the audience’s expectations through complex, synchronized art forms is a rare feat. We need more artists with the boldness to confuse and delight us, pushing the boundaries of what art can be and demanding a deeper level of engagement from the viewer.