Philip Glass is unsure of how many operas he has written, thoughit is upwards of eighteen. This doesn’t quite put him into the Donizetti sphere, but it does distinguish him among twentieth-century composers. Einstein on the Beach, a collaboration with Robert Wilson, is his most famous work, and the “history” operas on Gandhi and Akhnaten have been revived. His penchant for examining historical figures continues with The White Raven, on the career of Vasco da Gama, and with the current Galileo Galilei. Galileo premiered last spring at the Goodman Theater in Chicago and was brought to the Brooklyn Academy of Music Opera House as its opening for the 2002 Next Wave Festival.
This ninety-minute “opera,” which is more oratorio/pageant than dramatic work, was written by Mary Zimmerman with Glass and Arnold Weinstein and was directed by Zimmerman. It tells Galileo’s story backwards in nine scenes, from his blind old age, reminiscing on the past. The opera moves in a retrograde motion from his recantation, inquisition, promulgation of his earth/sun thesis, to when he invented the telescope. Much of the text is derived from original sources.
The epilogue is a Zimmerman conceit: a performance of an early opera (by Galileo’s father). This serves as a metaphor for Galileo’s life, at the end of which he is summoned to Heaven by his beloved dead daughter Marie Celeste.
In fact this ending (which is similar, as I recall it, to the ending of The White Raven) allows the work to finish positively rather than on the poignancy of an old man muttering “Eppur si muove,” in the opening monologue. What we have is a circus finale—everyone onstage parading and rejoicing at the sanctification of a great name. Not incidentally, audiences find the circus atmosphere infectious.
Glass’s music is, of course, instantly recognizable, although the tightly woven musical patterns seem to be loosened nowadays, and the counterpoint melodies that sometimes float overhead are a bit more sentimentalized than before. Glass has, over the years, refined his music-making to a formula that communicates directly to an audience. He lays down orchestral patterns, then overlays conjunct, expressively declamatory vocal lines (more influenced by chant than by melisma). At times, he achieves a sort of austere beauty. Yet the overall feel is one not of movement but of stasis. These pageant-operas that Glass likes to create remind one of those vast tableaux of the Mexican muralists or of Thomas Hart Benton, stretching across walls and courtyards in order to tell a story.
The production was colorful and lively. Thank Heavens, there were no trench coats and fedoras, but period costume, and, in the sixth scene, a visual demonstration of some of Galileo’s theorems about the rates at which balls fall through the air or roll down inclines. The experiments provided movement onstage, and they were aided by another innovation: the projection of selected translations and words in differing scripts (depending on the source) on the back wall. Peter Sellars, in his production of Tannhäuser in Chicago, first used surtitling as an integral part of the production, but few since have taken up the challenge.
The cast, led by the conductor William Lumpkin and the Eos Orchestra, was a strong one (with many roles doubled) and with two Galileos: John Duykers as the older man and Eugene Perry as the younger one. Duykers in particular, with his very distinctive tenor, gave shape to the historical figure, especially in his opening monologue.
It is difficult to say if these Glass pageant-operas have a future, because they exist in a stillwater of the operatic form. They are, however, an integral part of Glass’s compositional interests.