American Marconi Wireless News - US theater and opera auteur Bob Wilson dead at 83

"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.

"While facing his diagnosis with clear eyes and determination, he still felt compelled to keep working and creating right up until the very end.

"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.

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

But it was in France that the artist was best known.

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

He had directed the inaugural show of the Opera Bastille in 1989 but 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.

P.Stevenson--AMWN