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Europeras 3 & 4 are Cage's “middle” operas, flanked by the grand Europeras 1 & 2 and the far more demure Europera 5. It shares elements from both, however, the result being a 70-minute collage of sounds that beautifully encapsulate the Western high art operatic tradition in a late-20th century form. Europera 3 & Europera 4 are themselves quite distinct from each other, with Europera 4 being far more intimate in scale and in density of materials. That said, Cage specified that the two works should always be performed together and in sequence, as combined they provide an interestingly contradictory and thus uniquely comprehensive presentation of operatic history. For more information on this work and others in the Europeras series, see Stefan Beyst's August 2005 essay John Cage's Europeras: a light- and soundscape as musical manifesto (http://d-sites.net/english/cage.htm), or Laura Kuhn's comprehensive doctoral dissertation, John Cage's Europeras 1 & 2: The Musical Means of Revolution (UCLA, 1992).
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