The Photographer

The Photographer
Opera by Philip Glass
The composer in 1993
Based on	life of Eadweard Muybridge
Premiere	1982 (1982) Holland Festival, Amsterdam

The Photographer is a three-part mixed media performance accompanied by music (also sometimes referred to as a chamber opera) by composer Philip Glass. The libretto is based on the life and homicide trial of 19th-century American photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Commissioned by the Holland Festival, the opera was first performed in 1982 at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam.

Eadweard Muybridge was an English-born photographer who relocated to the American West and was an early pioneer in photographic technology. He photographed well-known landscapes of Yosemite that pushed the aesthetic and technological boundaries of the medium. His early photographic motion studies conducted in association with Leland Stanford led to the earliest moving photographic images.

In 1874, Muybridge murdered Major Harry Larkyns (referred to as 'Colonel Harry Larkyns' in this work), whom he suspected of being his wife's lover, and was acquitted by a jury against the instructions of the judge on the ground of justifiable homicide. His trial is well-known because his defense argued that a head injury incurred in a stagecoach accident altered his personality, which modern neuroscientists believe could have been caused by certain types of brain damage.

The text included in Glass' work is based on words drawn from the transcripts of the trial and Muybridge's actual letters to his wife. The second act features a slideshow of Muybridge's photographs. While based on historical events in Muybridge's life, the work also comments on aspects of Muybridge's work, melding both themes.

The form of this work consists of three acts: a play with incidental music, a concert accompanying a slideshow of Muybridge's work, and a dance with musical accompaniment. In total, the piece lasts about 90 minutes.

Act I is a play that includes three incidental pieces of music that fit into the play. The play recounts Muybridge's murder of Major Harry Larkyns and the trial, with an irreverent tone.

The incidental piece "A Gentleman's Honor", includes words drawn from the actual trial transcript, commentary, and Muybridge's letters. It draws on the incident in which Flora sent Larkyns a portrait of Muybridge's son Florado, seeming to imply that Larkyns could be the father ('Whose baby is this'), and draws on the commentary of spectators ('All that white hair and a long white beard'), as well as referencing Muybridge's carriage accident and his later motion studies ('Horses in the air '). The phrases 'Artificial moonlight' and 'Artificial sky' may refer to techniques used by Muybridge in his landscape technology (overlaying clouds onto his images). Glass notes that he originally conceived the text of A Gentleman's Honor as based on a poem by Muybridge called "Circles", but Glass reconsidered and asked David Byrne to use material from the trial itself, as well as Muybridge's letters.