Kepler's Trial: An Opera

Kepler's Trial: An Opera

by Tim Watts based on Ulinka Rublack's book The Astronomer & the Witch and film elements by Aura Satz.

Premieres on 28 and 29 October 2016 at St John’s College, Cambridge.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) is one of the most admired astronomers who ever lived. He defended Copernicus's sun-centred universe and defined the three laws of planetary motion. Less well known is the fact that in 1615, when Kepler was at the height of his career, his old, widowed mother Katharina was accused of witchcraft. The proceedings led to a criminal trial, with Kepler conducting his mother's defence to fight for legal justice. Kepler's Trial responds to Paul Hindemith's Opera Harmony of the World and other accounts which present Katharina Kepler as deranged, witch-like woman. Based on fresh historical research, it counters the endemic misogynism against old women which prevailed in the witchcraze and continues to be a cultural force. Instead, the book, opera and film explore with sensitivity, empathy and nuance what it meant for Johannes and Katharina to face the trauma of an accusation of witchcraft, before and after the trial. The opera is the culmination of a highly unusual creative process, in which a team of leading scholars met regularly to explore the story. The opera by Tim Watts seeks to illuminate the story through the combination of allusions to the music of the early 17th century with video sequences by Aura Satz that amplify its themes of darkness and light, sight and illusion, and, at its centre, the depiction of the aging woman.