Since it’s Philip Glass weekend at @MetOpera, tonight’s kitchen listening is one of my very favourites.

The story behind Robert Wilson’s *the CIVIL warS* project is why I’ve never really got on with the Olympics. Wilson was commissioned to produce a major artistic piece for the 1984 games, and conceived a massive five part opera...

Wilson’s list of collaborators is astonishing - Glass composed all of act five and some of (if I recall correctly) act two. Act V also includes Laurie Anderson. Gavin Bryars had a section. The acts were connected by interludes by - who else? - David Byrne.

I mean, that sounds like the greatest show on Earth (in 1984), right?

The Olympic Committee disagreed. They pulled the funding, citing budget shortages. Of course, it later emerged that the 1984 games were rolling in money. Robert Wilson was, rightly, furious.

*the CIVIL warS* was never staged in its entirety. Bryars reworked his part for *On Photography*; Byrne’s interludes were recorded as *The Knee Plays* (highly recommended). Glass’ Act V was essentially an opera in itself, and was recorded by Dennis Russell Davies in 1999.

Anyway, a more biographical note to round off this thread. In 2013 I had a dental root infection resulting from a failed root canal four years beforehand. As some of you will know, that kind of thing *really hurts*.

I had a massive box of 30/500 co-codamol from the local emergency centre, as I couldn’t get to the dentist until the next day. The pain was so bad that it took the painkillers ages to work. At about midnight I was getting seriously worried that they weren’t going to work...

So I ended up putting on the headphones and listening to *the CIVIL warS*, concentrating furiously on *every single* note and detail as the best distraction I could muster.