The rarest works often provide the greatest rewards at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis.
The 2024 season’s final offering is Philip Glass’s Galileo Galilei. As stage director James Robinson points out in the program, this work “makes very infrequent appearances in American opera houses compared with the composer’s other operas.” The neglect is baffling in the light of the current production. Galileo Galilei is enthralling and deeply moving in Robinson’s brilliant staging.
The libretto is by Mary Zimmerman, Glass and Arnold Weinstein. The opera begins in Florence in 1642, as the despondent, 77-year-old Galileo is brooding over whether his blindness is a punishment for contradicting church dogma or lying when he recanted.
Time moves backwards as Galileo reconsiders the events that laid him low. Each scene takes place before the previous one, starting with Galileo’s recantation before Pope Urban VIII and his sentencing to house arrest and penance. Effects precede causes in the scenes depicting Galileo’s difficulties with church authorities over a book he wrote in the form of a dialogue.
There are no signs of the trouble to come in the scene in which the speakers in Galileo’s dialogue come alive to present his ideas. The next scene animates the experiments in which Galileo uses an inclined plane to study falling objects.
After Galileo triumphantly unveils his telescope, a grand duchess reminds him of a time in their youth when they attended an opera composed by his father. In the last scene, the young Galileo and duchess watch his father’s opera, which is about a mythological view of heavenly motion. The final moment shows how Galileo’s curiosity puts him on the path we have just observed in reverse.
Glass’s mesmerizing score rises to every demand of the story. The tension and anxiety are overwhelming when Galileo is under attack, but the elation is irresistible in music depicting the exhilaration of scientific discovery. Sean Curran’s choreography adds to that joy.
The music is performed compellingly by a 13-member ensemble from the St. Louis Symphony under Kwamé Ryan’s masterly conducting. The musical staff includes chorus master Andrew Whitfield, assistant and cover conductor Kedrick Terrell Armstrong, repetiteur Douglas Sumi, and English diction specialist Jennifer Ringo.
OTSL has assembled a superb cast of singing actors. Paul Groves finds great pathos in the older Galileo’s struggle against implacable opposition. Sean Michael Plumb replaces Groves as Galileo in the dialogue scene. Plumb revels in the younger Galileo’s quest for knowledge. Vanessa Becerra emanates the filial devotion of Galileo’s daughter, Maria Celeste, and Hunter Enoch is chilling as Pope Urban and his earlier self, Cardinal Barberini
Also in the splendid cast are (in order of appearance):
- Robert Mellon as Cardinal 2, Servant, and Oracle 2
- Jared Werlein as Cardinal 3
- Elijah English as Cardinal 1, Oracle 1, and other
- Luke Elmer as other
- Emilio Vasquez as other
- David Wolfe as other
- Gabriela Linares as Scribe
- Jennifer Kreider as Sagredo
- Brad Bickhardt as Priest
- Lucy Evans as Marie De Medici
- Michelle Mariposa as Maria Maddalena
- Kathleen O’Mara as Grand Duchess Christina
Stage director Robinson cannot be praised too highly for a production in which every element works together to demonstrate the importance and continuing relevance of a story about the battle between scientific inquiry and entrenched ideology. The clerics’ sunglasses in the recantation scene are telling details that illuminate the connection between the past and the present.
Marco Piemontese’s costumes and Krystal Balleza and Will Vicari’s wigs and makeup capture the opulence of the setting in Renaissance Italy. The pope’s robe is extraordinary, as is the cross that spans the robes of three cardinals.
The centerpiece of Allen Moyer’s scenic design is an imposing, two-sided Renaissance façade that can be rotated between scenes. Eric Southern’s lighting produces striking changes in the look.
Greg Emetaz’s video projections are dazzling. They illustrate Galileo’s principles, add wonder to the rotation of the set, provide delightful humor in Galileo’s experiments, and fill the stage with birds for a scene in which they are crucial. Most remarkable of all are the projections at the end for the opera by Galileo’s father. A stunning traditional view of the heavens evolves into the view Galileo would eventually propound—an equally beautiful image of bodies orbiting the sun.
Galileo Galilei continues through June 29 at the Loretto-Hilton Center, 130 Edgar Road. The running time is 95 minutes with no intermission.
—Gerry Kowarsky
Photo © Eric Woolsey
From the left, Jared Werline as Cardinal 3, Elijah English as Cardinal 1, Robert Mellon as Cardinal 2, Hunter Enoch as Pope Urban VIII Paul Groves as Older Galileo in Galileo Galilei.
