A collision of worlds at the MET.

• Author: Werner, Lou
• Position: Metropolitan Opera, New York City - Americas !Ojo!

New York City's Metropolitan Opera rarely commissions new works, so the world premiere of "The Voyage" on October 12 (Columbus Day) was an event awaited with high expectations--especially since the composer is the avant-garde musical genius Philip Glass and his purpose is to meditate upon the Columbian quincentennial and the deeper meaning of exploration itself.

In keeping with Glass's allegorical style of narration, "The Voyage" does not relate Columbus' story as much as refract it. He shares the stage with a wheel-chair-bound cosmologist, a starship commander, a troupe of dancing politicians, and the sexy ghost of Queen Isabella. The plot spans the galaxy through times past, present, and future. Its three acts jump between a space craft preparing to crash on an unknown planet--is it Earth?--during an Ice Age, the poop deck of the Santa Maria on its thirty-second day at sea, and a science lab in the year 2092 where the riddle of our planet's extra-terrestrial origins might be solved.

The opera's librettist is playwright David Henry Hwang, author of the provocative Broadway hit "M. Butterfly" and a previous collaborator with Glass on their 1988 science fiction musical drama "1000 Airplanes on the Roof." Although the story line and structure were conceived by Glass, Hwang was charged with the difficult task of putting abstract ideas into everyday speech.

"The opera is about the accident of discovery and the clash of cultures, but we had to give these themes a human shape...