Exploring science and religion as Portland Opera presents Philip Glass' 'Galileo Galilei'

galileo.JPGGalileo (Richard Troxell) faces the Catholic Church's Roman Inquisition, which charges him with heresy and puts him under house arrest for the last nine years of his life.
As every student learns, Galileo got into a heap of trouble for squinting at the sun without his Ray-Bans and declaring the Earth revolved around it. Galileo (1564-1642) didn't stop there. Through a telescope, he was the first to see sunspots -- no wonder he went blind -- and found the moons of Jupiter and discovered that the moon was not smooth, but cratered and mountainous, just like Earth. He dropped stones from towers and ship masts and played with pendula and clocks. His most famous experiment showed that all objects fall at the same speed, no matter what their weight.
"Galileo Galilei" by Philip Glass
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, and April 7; 2 p.m. Sunday
Where: Newmark Theatre, 1111 S.W. Broadway
Tickets: Starting at $20; 503-241-1802;
He had a lot of fun until the Catholic Church called him a heretic and put him under house arrest for the last nine years of his life.

According to Stephen Hawking, Galileo is responsible for the birth of modern science. Albert Einstein called him the father of modern science, but it wasn't until 1992 that the Catholic Church actually pardoned him.

Much of Galileo's life is contained in "Galileo Galilei," a 2002 opera by Philip Glass and Mary Zimmerman that Portland Opera presents Friday through April 7 at the Newmark Theatre. The production presents the company's young professionals, known as studio artists, and guests, in the opera's West Coast premiere. Like Glass' "Orphée" that the company presented in 2009, Portland Opera will make a recording of "Galileo" on the composer's label.

gal2.JPGGalileo and friends have fun with scientific experiments, including tracking the speed of balls on an incline.
The opera moves in reverse chronology, beginning with Galileo as an blind old man after his trial by the Roman Inquisition, exploring his scientific discoveries in middle age and ending with the young Galileo watching an opera composed by his father. The main opera depicts how he arrived at his beliefs and his difficulties with the church, with visual representations of his experiments.

Balls roll down a ramp, a ladder shows how a telescope works, a gondola circles the stage and lights become stars. Nine singers play 20 characters. In one scene, they playfully recreate Galileo's experiment with balls on an inclined ramp.

"The audience will come wanting to know about Galileo and science and this makes science fun," says Kevin Newbury, who directs the stage action and who directed "Nixon in China" for Portland Opera in 2006.

About the reverse structure, he says, "You're seeing how you get there, like a telescope. Start with something big and going back with three Galileos, old, middle-aged and young."

[A fascinating interview with Mary Zimmerman, who wrote the "Galileo Galilei" libretto, on working with Philip Glass.]

Although the opera is not highly political, Newbury finds the science-versus-religion debate relevant today. "We're still debating the same issues -- the controversy over evolution. This feels wildly contemporary to me." The opera's message, he says, is that science, nature, art and technology are interconnected.

Adds Zimmerman, who wrote the libretto, "It's asking ... 'Where do we come from? Does the adult already exist in the child'?"

Unlike Glass' operas such as "Akhnaten" or "Satyagraha," "Galileo" is not monumental, but short, about 90 minutes.

As for Glass' music, Newbury calls it "all about motion and stillness," perhaps an aural metaphor for the movement of the Earth and the stationary sun. "It's exquisitely beautiful, the opening is gorgeous. I think it's one of the best things he's written."

-- David Stabler