Glass’s Les Enfants Terribles anchors Amsterdam’s Opera Forward

The inclusion of Philip Glass’s Les Enfants Terribles at Amsterdam’s Opera Forward Festival marks the final institutionalization of minimal music (a style based on the repetition of slowly changing figures). Glass, once the radical outsider of the 1970s downtown scene, has become the safe choice for major festivals. While the Amsterdam production was praised for its energy, the programming choice signals a retreat from the "forward" mandate. To program Glass in 2024 is to program a late-20th-century classic, not to engage with the volatile edges of contemporary practice. The festival’s reliance on an established brand suggests an institutional cautiousness—choosing the reliability of the repetitive cell over the uncertainty of new compositional voices.