Phillip Glass has written 20 plus Operas, mostly on interrelated themes of 
discovery, religion and the cosmos, that have focused on Columbus, Einstien, 
Vasco de Gama, Akhnaten, among others.

Tony Award Winner, Mary Zimmerman, wrote the libretto,and directs the 
production.
-------------------------------------------------
Opera Review
SEEING THE BIG SPIN

In his new opera, 'Galileo Galilei,' Philip Glass unravels the tale of the 
great astronomer in backward order

By Mark Swed
Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times
June 25 2002

CHICAGO--Galileo's life and work had the character of intricate, intertwined 
dance. The great 17th century astronomer, mathematician and inventor 
understood that movement was the way of nature. He demonstrated the dance of 
the heavens, proving once and for all that the Earth revolved around the sun. 
And he delicately danced around Vatican politics as he attempted to subvert 
an Earth-centric scriptural interpretation with the uncommon grace of his 
arguments.

Philip Glass' new opera, "Galileo Galilei," which premiered Monday at the 
Goodman Theatre, has its own original ideas about movement and dance. It 
proceeds backward in time, from stillness and doubt to sublime, purposeful 
motion. The first image we see is the blind, dying astronomer no long able to 
peer into his telescope and having, instead, to turn his gaze grimly inward. 
Some 90 minutes later, with the planets personified in their orbits in a 
delirious opera within an opera, the music and movement become one big, 
happy, infectiously life-affirming swirl.... 

There are eight scenes from Galileo's life. As he progressively gets younger, 
he recants as heresy his proofs of the Earth's revolutions, faces the 
Inquisition, has a sympathetic meeting with Cardinal Barberini before the 
cardinal becomes the less sympathetic Pope Urban VIII and presents his 
telescope to the Medici court in Florence. There are idylls with his 
daughter, the nun Maria Celeste, and there is a scene of gravitational 
experiments with falling balls. At the opera's center, there is a brief 
theatrical setting of Galileo's famous treatise, "Dialogue Concerning the Two 
Chief Systems of the World."

The epilogue, and the most wonderful and fanciful part of the production, is 
the opera within an opera. The child Galileo watches a mythological work, 
presumably by his father, a member of the Florentine Camerata, which devised 
the notion of opera. At last, conventional biography is transcended. The 
cosmos opens up as the hunter Orion takes his place among the stars, and the 
court and entertainers alike revolve merrily like planets. The last bit is 
corny: The old Galileo has reappeared and is led to his own place in the 
firmament by his daughter, now an angel. But the music by this point is so 
joyous, the dance so irresistible, that the corn is agreeably sweet...
*
"Galileo Galilei" premiered Monday, and continues at the Goodman Theatre, 
Chicago, through Aug. 4, (312) 443-3800, www.goodman-theatre.org. 

The production then travels to the Brooklyn Academy of Music and London's 
Barbican Centre in the fall.