Spoleto Festival USA

Johannes Kepler, the groundbreaking astronomer and mathematician of the scientific revolution, imagined “a continuous heavenly music only perceived by the mind.” In his new opera, composer Philip Glass captures this majestic celestial sound as he explores the visionary dreams and prosaic nightmares of Kepler. One of the signal artists of our era, Glass continues to create work that is at once contemporary and iconic. Sam Helfrich directs and Spoleto Festival USA Resident Conductor John Kennedy conducts the first staged production of Kepler in the United States. With a libretto gleaned primarily from Kepler’s own writings and a driving and hypnotic score that embodies the scientist’s quest to reconcile scientific discovery with the divine, the opera suggests, as Kepler himself believed, that there really may be a music of the spheres.
Sung in English and Latin. Duration is approximately 1 hour, 50 minutes.