Life of Galileo (German: Leben des Galilei), also known as Galileo, is a play by the 20th century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and collaborator Margarete Steffin, with incidental music by Hanns Eisler. The play follows the career of the great Italian natural philosopher Galileo Galilei during the Galileo affair, in which he was prosecuted for heresy by the Roman Catholic Church for the promulgation of heliocentrism. The play embraces themes such as the conflict between dogmatism and scientific evidence, as well as interrogating the values of constancy in the face of oppression. Further themes include the relationship between science and authority, the responsibility of a scientist to the general public, the submissiveness of scientists and common people to authority, and the subversive effect of new scientific ideas on the religious and social order. The play was written in 1938 and received its first theatrical production (in German) at the Zurich Schauspielhaus, opening on the 9th of September 1943. This production was directed by Leonard Steckel, with set-design by Teo Otto. The cast included Steckel himself (as Galileo), Karl Paryla and Wolfgang Langhoff. The second (or "American") version was written in English between 1945–1947 in collaboration with Charles Laughton, and opened at the Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles on 30 July 1947. It was directed by Joseph Losey and Brecht, with musical direction by Serge Hovey and set-design by Robert Davison. Laughton played Galileo, with Rusty Lane as Barberini and Joan McCracken as Virginia. This production opened at the Maxine Elliott's Theatre in New York on 7 December of the same year. In 1955 Brecht prepared a third version. A production, by the Berliner Ensemble with Ernst Busch in the title role, opened in January 1957 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and was directed by Erich Engel, with set-design by Caspar Neher. The play was first published in 1940. A 1975 film adaptation starring Chaim Topol was directed by Joseph Losey, the director of the first American production of the original play.
Versions of the play After immigrating to the United States from Hitler's Germany (with stopovers in various other countries in between, among them the USSR), Brecht translated and re-worked the first version of his play in collaboration with the actor Charles Laughton. The result of their efforts was the second, "American version" of the play, entitled simply Galileo, which to this day remains the most widely staged version in the English-speaking world. This version differed in tone from the original, as Brecht felt that the optimistic portrait of the scientific project present in the first version required revision in a post-Hiroshima world, where science's harmful potential had become more apparent. This second version formed the basis for Losey's 1975 film adaptation for American Film Theatre under the title Galileo with Topol in the title role. In September 1947, Brecht was subpoenaed in the US by the House Un-American Activities Committee for alleged communist connections. He testified before HUAC on 30 October 1947, and flew to Europe on 31 October. He chose to return to East Germany and continued to work on the play, now once again in the German language. The final German version premiered at Cologne in April 1955. Matej Danter offers a readily-accessible and detailed comparison of the early, the American, and the final German versions. A Scottish Theatre Company production of the Laughton translation, directed by Peter Dews, toured Scottish theatres in the autumn of 1985, with Tom Fleming in the title role. In 2013 the Royal Shakespeare Company performed a new version of the play based on a "pared down" translation by Mark Ravenhill; the Swan Theatre production received a favorable review from the veteran theater critic Michael Billington.
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