Galileo

Galileo is a new rock musical about Galileo Galilei, the Italian astronomer whose telescope set him against the Catholic Church in the 17th century. The show tells that story through three people who are bound together and then pulled apart by the conflict: Galileo; his close friend Maffeo Barberini, a churchman rising toward the papacy; and his daughter Virginia, who shares her father's mind but not his freedom.

The book is by Danny Strong, with music and lyrics by Zoe Sarnak and Michael Weiner and direction by Michael Mayer. The plot is an original one rather than an adaptation of Brecht's play Life of Galileo or any other single source: the writers build their own drama out of the known record of the Galileo affair.

This is a new musical rather than a revival. It comes to the Shubert Theatre from Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California, where it was developed and first staged in 2024 under the title Galileo: A Rock Musical. Much of that creative team, and several of the original actors, came east with it.

As the curtain rises, Galileo is a 45-year-old scholar who already doubts the church's teaching that Earth sits at the center of creation; like Copernicus, he suspects otherwise. Then he builds a better telescope, aims it upward and finds new detail on the moon and far beyond it. Europe is thrilled. The church takes notice.

Two people stand closest to him. Barberini is his trusted confidant, a bishop whose career keeps climbing until he becomes Pope Urban VIII. Virginia is quick and gifted, and her father has taught her his sciences, yet as a woman she is shut out of the professions open to him. Born outside marriage, she has few prospects for love, and the convent looms. Galileo wants a better future for her. A neighbor, Alessandro Tarantola, loves Virginia and hopes to make her his wife.

Rome summons him. Galileo must answer for his findings before church authorities who are themselves facing a revolt, while religious war spreads through Europe. Senior clergy such as Cardinal Morosini and Bishop Grasso treat any challenge to Scripture as an attack. Ordered to stop teaching Copernicus, Galileo keeps going, and churchmen fear his ideas could aid the Protestants that Catholic armies are fighting in the north. As faith, ambition and love drive the three central characters apart, each has to choose what to sacrifice.

Much of this outline comes from the 2024 Berkeley version, and the script may have changed for Broadway.

A little real history helps. Galileo was born in Pisa in 1564. Copernicus had put the sun at the center in De revolutionibus in 1543, and in 1600 the philosopher Giordano Bruno, who pushed the Copernican picture further, was executed in Rome after a heresy trial. In 1610 Galileo published Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), a report on what his telescope had revealed. Over time his observations included Jupiter's four largest moons, the phases of Venus, lunar craters and sunspots. In 1616 the Inquisition ruled heliocentrism heretical. Barberini was pope from 1623 until 1644, years that overlapped the Thirty Years' War.

Sarnak and Weiner wrote the music and lyrics together and share credit for the arrangements. The show is billed as a rock musical and has also been described as a biographical rock opera. Either way, the score is original rock music, set against a story from the 1600s.

Brian Usifer is the music supervisor and orchestrator. In Berkeley, an eight-piece pit band played the score under music director Roberto Sinha.

In September 2026, three numbers from the Broadway score were sung in public, one by each of the leads:

• "Heaven's Changing" is Galileo's solo.
• "Limited Life" belongs to Virginia, the only woman among the principal characters.
• "Power & The Glory" is Barberini's number with the full company; in Berkeley it came in the second act under a slightly longer title.

Mayer, Neumann, Usifer, Hauck, Adams and Shivers all return from the 2024 premiere. Hilferty and Tobman join for Broadway, taking over costumes and projections from the Berkeley designers.

In Berkeley, the set was a two-level structure traced in LED light that could read as a university hall one moment and a church interior the next, with projected images drawn from religion, science and the night sky.

As of October 2026, the Broadway company is led by Raúl Esparza as Galileo Galilei, Jeremy Kushnier as Bishop Maffeo Barberini and Joy Woods as Virginia Galilei. Javier Muñoz plays Cardinal Morosini, Bradley Dean plays Bishop Grasso, and Jordon Lee Garcia makes his Broadway debut as Alessandro Tarantola. Michael Park is the alternate Galileo. Esparza, Kushnier, Muñoz and Dean all played the same parts in Berkeley, where Dean was also the alternate Galileo.

Esparza is a four-time Tony nominee, with nominations in all four acting categories for Taboo, Company, The Homecoming and Speed-the-Plow; television viewers know him as ADA Rafael Barba on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He had not been seen on Broadway since Leap of Faith in 2012. Woods was nominated for a Tony and a Grammy as Louise in the 2024 Gypsy revival. Kushnier's Broadway roles include Roger in Rent and Tommy DeVito in Jersey Boys. Muñoz took on the title role in the original Broadway company of Hamilton, and Park was the first Larry Murphy in Dear Evan Hansen.

In June 2019, Esparza led a one-performance workshop reading of the show at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. In 2023 his casting in a Berkeley Rep world premiere, planned for summer 2024, was made public.

That production opened officially on May 15, 2024, in Berkeley Rep's 573-seat Roda Theatre, and its run was extended through June 23, 2024. Berkeley Rep presented it by special arrangement with Jordan Roth, later one of the Broadway producers, and Key to the City Productions.

On February 10, 2026, Lipitz, Tisch and Roth announced the Broadway run at the Shubert Theatre. The same day, Mayer presented the show at a Broadway Across America conference in Miami, where former astronaut Mae Jemison introduced a showcase of songs from the score. At the time, the Shubert was still home to Hell's Kitchen, the Alicia Keys musical, which played there until February 22, 2026.

Dean, Garcia, Muñoz and Park were added to the company on September 2, 2026, and the full cast was announced on September 14. Ten days later, Esparza, Woods, Kushnier and the company sang three numbers at Edge NYC, the observation deck with a glass floor 100 stories above Hudson Yards.

As of October 2026, previews are set to begin on November 10, 2026, with opening night on Sunday, December 6, 2026.