For unfailing fans of acclaimed Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen and prolific American composer Philip Glass, including those intrigued by their collaboration, Australian Contemporary Opera Co’s (ACOCo) Book of Longing (presented in partnership with The Wheeler Centre) is an absorbing, meditative work in which Cohen’s insightful poetry is respectfully coloured with Glass’ hypnotic musical signature. In front of a full house at the wondrously framed steel and glass surrounds of Federation Square’s Edge Theatre, it was beautifully performed and sensitively played.

Book of Longing

Martin Buckingham, Dimity Shepherd, Emily Burke, Christopher Tonkin with Richard Piper, Book of Longing, Australian Contemporary Opera Co, 2022. Photo © Hamish Brown

It’s not the first time Glass and Cohen’s Book of Longing has been performed in Melbourne. Almost 14 years ago, it was programmed by the Melbourne International Arts Festival, a newish work at the time having only premiered a little over a year earlier, in June 2007, in Toronto.

When Cohen shared an early draft of his collection of poems in a meeting with Glass some years earlier, the idea was born to set a selection of them to music and imagery....