The Glass Box, the 10-CD Nonesuch retrospective covering 40 years of the works of Philip Glass, hits stores today, just one day after the New York City Opera announced that it has commissioned the composer to create a new opera titled The Perfect American, about the life of another iconic American figure, Walt Disney.

In the liner note to The Glass Box, music critic Tim Page refers to the collection as an "interim report" on the composer's life's work, a fitting description, given how prolific Glass remains. The new work for City Opera, based on the novel Der König von Amerika by Peter Stephan Jungk, will be Glass's 24th opera and will honor his 75th birthday when it premieres during the 2012–2013 season. In the nearer future, City Opera has scheduled Glass's groundbreaking 1976 collaboration with Robert Wilson, Einstein on the Beach, for 2009–2010, the inaugural season of the company's new general manager, Gerard Mortier. It will be the first staged production of the piece in New York since 1992 and the Opera's first production in its newly refurbished home at Lincoln Center.

"The story of the last days of Walt Disney, American icon and creator of perhaps the most pervasive fantasy world on our planet, is surprisingly gripping and at times disturbing," says the composer. "But, on the face of it, how could it be anything else? The pulse of his life has to be the pulse of our own American culture. And, like other aspects of life here, it is unimaginable, alarming, and truly frightening. I am looking forward to beginning these collaborations with Gerard Mortier at the New York City Opera."

For more information, visit nycopera.com.