Phillip Glass has written numerous operas.
 It is Glass's first opera in German, and was premiered by the Bruckner Orchestra Linz and Dennis Russell Davies in September 2009
 Composed in spring to fall of 1975 in close collaboration with Wilson, Glass's first opera was first premiered in summer 1976 at the Festival d'Avignon, and in November of the same year to a mixed and partly enthusiastic reaction from the audience at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City

