Galileo Galilei of her life. Vincenzo was later legitimised as the legal heir of Galileo and married Sestilia Bocchineri. Although Galileo seriously considered the priesthood as a young man, at his father's urging he instead enrolled in 1580 at the University of Pisa for a medical degree. In 1581, when he was studying medicine, he noticed a swinging chandelier, which air currents shifted about to swing in larger and smaller arcs. To him, it seemed, by comparison with his heartbeat, that the chandelier took the same amount of time to swing back and forth, no matter how far it was swinging. When
Galileo Galilei (opera) Galileo Galilei (opera) Galileo Galilei is an opera based on excerpts from the life of Galileo Galilei which premiered in 2002 at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, as well as subsequent presentations at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's New Wave Music Festival and London's Barbican Theatre. Music by Philip Glass, libretto and original direction by Mary Zimmerman and Arnold Weinstein. The piece is presented in one act consisting of ten scenes without break. "Galileo Galilei" is Glass' 18th opera, and draws from letters of Galileo and his family, and various other documents, to retrospectively journey through Galileo's life. Opening with him as