GALILEO AND SEXY AERIALISTS

Aerialist This past Saturday night the Rubin Museum hosted a lot of perfume and a lot of Italians. It was the third night of Divinamente New York, a five-night Italian festival of culture and spirituality that runs through April 26th. We had come for "Stellarum Opifice", an "aerial, theater and musical performance" that was "freely based" on letters between Galileo and his illegitimate daughter, Virginia.

In the museum's atrium, Pamela Villoresi, an Italian actress and director and the festival's founder, introduced this year's theme as “The Fear of God”. Specifically, Divinamente—an import from Rome—aims to navigate "various sides of spirituality". Soon after Villoresi ended her remarks, a pair of aerialists descended on a strip of yellow silk from the museum's skylight, straddling and clasping each other in an impossibly cool-looking pantomime of anti-gravity sex. Encircling the atrium by its staircase, spectators were close enough to hear the performers inhale as they swooped about, using only the fabric for support.

Once the aerialists had finished, the audience filed downstairs to find a man standing behind a mask, waving his arms while a chant piped in from speakers. This was hard to interpret, and an Italian actress in the audience giggled. After the chanting, we were led into the museum theatre, where we were met with a glowing lavender screen and stormy, whizzing noises. Once we were seated, a figure in white platform shoes and a spangled ivory coat made her way down the aisle. The figure, played by actress Federica Bern, knelt onstage and prayed in Italian, then spoke from Virginia's letters. "When my father sent me to the convent I was 13 years old," she said. "My habit was too big—it trailed to the ground."

What followed was a monologue drawn from letters written by Virginia—who took the convent name Maria Celeste in honour of her father's work—to her father. As Virginia, Bern revolved slowly in a metal mesh habit while a screen behind her glowed lime, blue and persimmon. "Never being idle allows me not to torment myself too much," she declared. In these expressive letters (collected in a translation by Dava Sobel called "Letters to Father"), she describes the attempted suicides of a sister nun and recalls a time when she observed her father's work. She entreats him not to work too hard.

The letters and performance capture two relationships: between Virginia and her father, and between Virginia and God. In a spirit of mortification and candour, the young correspondent addresses both figures, and often blurs the lines between the two. Bern's performance is luminous—she looks, in her costume, like a 17th-century Lady Gaga devoted to penitential psalms in lieu of dance pop. The tenor of the relationship between Galileo and his daughter reminded me of William and Caroline Herschel, British brother-and-sister astronomists from the 18th century. An intellectual kinship and devotion to the stars made both pairs spookily attuned to notions of sublimity.

"Fear of God" is an awkward mantle to bear, yet "Stellarum Opifice"—and
particularly Bern's performance—managed to resonate with both spiritual and
secular meaning.

~ MOLLY YOUNG

Picture credit: Michael J. Palma