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  

• ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

  PROGRAM LEAFLET

  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

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