Glass: Galileo Galilei
Libretto by Mary
Zimmerman with Philip Glass and Arnold Weinstein
John Duykers
(tenor) - Older Galileo
Eugene Perry (baritone) - Young Galileo,
Salviate
Alicia Berneche (soprano) - Older Maria Celeste, Marie de' Medici,
Eos
Andrew Funk (bass) - Pope Urban VIII/Cardinal Barberini,
Simplicio
Mark Crayton (countertenor) - Cardinal 1, Inquisitor, First
Oracle
Gregory Purnhagen (tenor) - Cardinal 2, Inquisitor, Second
Oracle
Andrew McQuery (tenor) - Cardinal 3, Priest
Sarah Shepherd
(soprano) - Scribe, Maria Maddalena
Mary Wilson (soprano) - Sagredo, Duchess
Cristina
Elizabeth Reiter (treble) - Young Maria Celeste
Eos
Orchestra
William Lumpkin (conductor)
Mary Zimmerman
(director)
Saturday 5 October 2002
Howard Gilman Opera House, Brooklyn Academy
of Music, New York City
Philip Glass is drawn to pathbreaking, quasi-mythic
historical figures — Einstein, Gandhi, even Dracula, and more recently
Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama . For his most
recent effort he has gone from explorers of the seas to an explorer of the skies: Galileo
Galilei, who invented the telescope and helped confirm Copernicus's theory that
the earth revolves around the sun rather than the other way around —
only to be forced by the Vatican to renounce the theory and everything he had
written about it.
Galileo is the sort of iconic character one might expect Glass to explore with director/designer Robert Wilson, a longtime collaborator. But for Galileo he made a different choice: Mary Zimmerman, a Chicago-based director who has made thrillingly inventive theater out of the scientific writings of Leonardo da Vinci and the stories of Ovid. Together, she and Glass have developed a charming, fable-like scenario wherein the aged Galileo looks back on his life in reverse chronological order, as if through the wrong end of a telescope: the death of his beloved daughter Maria Celeste, his forced repudiation of his own scientific work, then his interrogation by the Inquisition, the writing of his Dialogues (a scene from the book is acted out on stage), his befriending of Cardinal Barberini, who later became Pope (and whose influence probably saved him from being burned from the stake).
This reverse chronology makes the final two scenes of the opera especially effective. First, we see the seed of Galileo's heliocentric idea planted in his head as he sits in church with his daughter one evening and watches the movement of the shadows cast when a priest accidentally bumps a chandelier with a crucifix; finally, we watch as the young boy Galileo watches a proto-opera written by his own father (Vincenzio Galilei was, in fact, a composer) depicting the mythical hunter Orion and how he came to be a constellation in the sky.
Glass's score is, of course, suffused with undulations back and forth across the
interval of a fourth or a minor third; some may think of this as a
mannerism, but by now it seems simply to have become a stylistic signature,
something that makes a given piece recognizably by Philip Glass. The vocal
writing is entirely declamatory semi-arioso; there's none of the sweeping
lyricism of the "Hymn to the Sun" in Akhnaten or the shimmering beauty
you can hear in Act I of The Voyage. Except for the ending, in which the
boy Galileo's epiphany is enacted to a lilting waltz rhythm, the score is
pleasant enough, but unexceptional and not terribly memorable.
Mary Zimmerman's staging, on the other hand, is a delight. Her set (design by Daniel Ostling) shows two buildings with arched balconies overlooking a central area that's equally convincing as town square, Inquisitors' cell, Vatican courtyard, cardinal's garden and ducal reception hall. The costumes (by Mara Bumenfeld) are entirely convincing, with no trendy updating or postmodern mix-and-match of periods. (The most interesting bit of costuming was in the staged excerpt from Galileo's Dialogues: the two characters that took the "modern" side in the sun-centric/earth-centric debate were dressed in Turkish style, a reminder that for most of the millennium before Galileo, the Muslim world was far ahead of Christendom scientifically.) There were no supertitles as such, but Zimmerman came up with a far more interesting idea: everything in the opera that was taken from a written document — be it Galileo's book, his confession, the notes from his interrogation by the Inquisition or a letter from his daughter — was projected on the back wall in an appropriate typeface. Far from seeming arch, it integrated the idea of supertitles (usually seen as a necessary evil) directly into the theatrical experience.
Mary Zimmerman is also very good with actors; the singing was variable, but
every performance was completely convincing dramatically, given the stylized
context. John Duykers in particular gave a fine portrayal of the Older Galileo:
his tenor sounds a bit dry at this point in his career, but here (as in In the
Penal Colony,
another recent Glass effort) his acting was as subtle as a veteran stage actor's. As Galileo's adult daughter, Alicia Berneche sang
with a bit more vehemence than the situation seemed to warrant, and countertenor
Mark Crayton was shrill, but the rest of the cast was
at least serviceable; Gregory Purnhagen, Sarah Sheperd and Mary Wilson were much more
than that, with voices that were a treat for the ear.
So how does Galileo Galilei rate as an opera? Perhaps that's not the
right question. Just as with In the Penal Colony (staged by JoAnne Akalaitis, another
famed innovator in the straight theater), the whole experience seems more driven
by the director and libretto — perhaps we should call it the script.
If you're willing to consider the score to be incidental music and the singing
to be part and parcel of the stylized staging, Galileo is a genuinely
lovely night at the theater. Perhaps the opera house isn't the best place for
it.
