Galileo Galilei

Mary Zimmerman directs Galileo Galilei, an opera by Philip Glass, with a libretto by Zimmerman, with Glass and Arnold Weinstein. The work is adapted from the turbulent life and surviving letters of the wildly brilliant sixteenth-century scientist whose perilous support of Copernicus? radical hypothesis that the earth revolved around the sun led to a lifetime conviction of heresy. Mirroring this concept of reversal, the story unfolds backwards in time, reaching its end with Galileo–as an infant–watching an opera composed by his father.