FULL GALILEO (Richard Mills) St.Kilda 2023 Samuel Dundas, Stacey Alleaume, Paul Biencourt
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: GALILEO
- Composer: Mills Richard
- Libretto: Malcolm Angelucci
- Venue & Opera Company: PALAIS THEATRE, ST KILDA, Australia
- Recorded: December 20, 2023
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Samuel Dundas, Stacey Alleaume, Paul Biencourt, Christopher Hillier, Michael Lampard, Stephen Marsh, Simon Meadows, Josh Morton-Galea, Emma Pearson, Michael Petruccelli, Shanul Sharma, Dimity Shepherd, Daniel Szesiong Todd
- Conductor: Richard Mills
- Orchestra: La Compañia, Orchestra Victoria
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Victorian Opera
- Date Published: 2023
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
In four words: Faith, Science, Power, Truth.
In a sentence: The opera examines the complex
fortunes of a great thinker through snapshots
of his public and private worlds, his network
of relationships, the conflicts of fame, political
discord and the ultimate ambiguities of faith,
knowledge, power and truth, set against the wider
contexts of human mortality and the ultimately
unknowable mysteries of creation and existence.
In a paragraph: The dramaturgy of Galileo can be
seen as a sequence of shifting windows offering
glimpses into a rich and complex story. Galileo’s
journey through life is set against the contexts of
his pursuit of truth, his relationships, his variable
fortunes and his personal faith that remained
constant to the very end, notwithstanding his
persecution by the Inquisition and the excesses
of the Papal court. Malcolm and I have made a
symphonic fresco that reads through time and
space in gestures of synthesis of many elements
to form an articulated whole. This process of
synthesis is a resonance of both the origins
of the operatic form, which fused a variety of
musical genres to tell a story, and the espousal
of the joyous potential of synthesis advocated
and explored by the Florentine Neo-Platonists
of the 1400s – Pico & Fincino, and the Camerata
– of which Vincenzio, Galileo’s father, was a
member. There is also the dimension of mythos,
the eternality of the Devils and Angels who are
significant presences in the design of our sonic
cartoon which, on another level, documents
Galileo’s pilgrims progress through the volatile
landscape of fortune’s capriciousness in a hostile
and largely uncomprehending world.
Galileo’s quest for truth is emblematic of the quest
of every creative artist and thinker to render and
articulate something revelatory about ourselves
and the world we live in.
The complexities and difficulties of Galileo are
always with us in some form or another because
truth seldom makes for comfort or facile solution,
I believe also that this subject deals with a world
not so different from our own. We are at an almost
“peak volatility”: belief systems are in conflict as
well as disintegrating in an increasingly unstable
world. Plague has revisited us, and compassion
and truth are frequently the first causalities of
zeal. Also, we seem on the cusp of new scientific
metaphors for creation, the so-called predicted
singularity that will revolutionise physics and our
current understandings of nature.
So, this piece is a testament to my belief in the
continuing vitality of the medium of opera. It is
also my gesture of love for Victorian Opera, which
I have led for over 10 years, and my affection and
esteem for all my colleagues who will participate
in the telling of this epic story in music.
Welcome and enjoy.
RICHARD MILLS AM
Composer and Conductor