Kepler (2009). Philip Glass /u.s. premiere round-up/

• '“Kepler” is his most chromatic, complex, psychological score...“Kepler” is a wise, major opera.' (Mark Swed/LA Times)
• "It's fantastically self-referential.  By that I mean that there are familiar gestures in the music, but by and large the piece itself is a look back toward more abstract concepts of what an opera is." (Richard Guerin/Glass Notes)
• 'As an opera, it is exceedingly nondramatic. But as an oratorio, it works brilliantly...But “Kepler” offers quite a few novel touches as well, including a colorful use of pitched percussion instruments and hollow blocks, often paired with rumbling bass lines.' (Allan Kozinn/NY Times)
• "Rather than filling the stage with a dramatic narrative of love or war, the performance filled the stage with dramatic music and the drama of intellectual quest." (ProfB/To the Work) 
• "It is a wonderful story, sung in German, with beautiful music and visuals." (Jim/Jim and Anne's Blog)
• "As for the opera itself, charmingly enough the texts were in German and Latin, especially adorable was when Kepler sang about the polyhedral models of the orbits of various planets." (Charlise Tiee/Opera Tattler)
• "For two hours they intone passages about orbits, stars, faith, and the horrors humankind brings upon itself. All of it was quite lovely and it could be stirring at times, but honestly, it was rather difficult to get much of a hold on any of it without a little more narrative meat." (Brian/OutWestArts)
• "I admit I barely paid attention to the transcription of the words. I
  found the content too heavy and clunky to worry about." (Erik Fabian/anything that will fit in a bag)
• "A sense of dark, bass-heavy doom pervaded the work, and at one point, it built and grew increasingly agitated as though it were a machine overheating...Perhaps if there had been something going on visually, Glass’ unending oscillations would have seemed more of a driving force to action than they did." (Ronni Reich/NJ Star-Ledger)