Programme for company’s move north includes Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, Britten and a new youth company

A rarely produced, interval-free five-hour opera hailed as revolutionary when it was first performed in 1976 is to be part of English National Opera’s first three years of plans for Greater Manchester.

Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s plotless Einstein on the Beach baffled some opera-goers when it was first seen in 1976. But many also saw it as visionary. The New York Times critic Clive Barnes said it was “bizarre, occasionally boring, yet always intermittently beautiful”, adding: “You will never forget it, even if you hate it.”