Europeras I and II were premiered by the Frankfurt Opera in December 1987 after a delay caused by fire; both call on the full resources of the house and apply the technique of indeterminacy to plot, stage directions, lighting, costuming, props, and sets, as well as to the music, drawn from fragments of the 18th and 19th century repertoire and intermittently drowned out by a taped Opera Mix, "as if you were shouting to someone on the opposite side of the street and a large truck passes by."
The area of the stage is divided into 64 quadrants corresponding to the I Ching and the nineteen singers share the space with dancers.
There is no conductor; performers are instead guided by large projections of a digital clock according to strict time intervals.
Cage even went so far as to hand out two separate sets of librettos to the audience at the premiere, themselves culled from previous operatic works.
The production in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York was the last performance attended by Cage before his death on August 12, 1992.