Opera Scotland

I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky 1995Edinburgh International Festival

Read more about the opera I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky

Nixon in China was an acclaimed success when Edinburgh mounted its first British performance, and has continued to be seen widely. Its successor, Klinghoffer, remains controversial. Ceiling/Sky, the third theatre piece by John Adams, seems to have been less successful - difficult to categorise, part-musical and part-opera, it works in performance, but is perhaps seen as too ephemeral for the seriousness of the subject-matter. There was no doubt about the quality of the perfornances in this European première, only three months after its opening. As in the Berkeley première, the sets were derived from the output of a number of graffiti artists. The musicians were an eight-piece rock band from Finland (where the show was due to move next).