Starlight on 44th Street, Raúl Esparza Returns to Broadway as Galileo

Raúl Esparza returns to Broadway on November 10, when Galileo, a new rock musical about the astronomer Galileo Galilei, begins previews at the Shubert Theatre on West 44th Street, with opening night set for December 6, Playbill reports.

It is his first Broadway run in more than 13 years, according to the producers' announcement from the Shubert Organization. For a lot of New Yorkers, that is long enough to have known him mostly as a face on television. For six seasons he was Rafael Barba, the Manhattan assistant district attorney on Law & Order, Special Victims Unit. Before that he was the actor Broadway could not stop nominating.

Now he plays a man who looked up and saw something the most powerful institution in Europe did not want seen.

Who Is Raúl Esparza?

Esparza is a stage actor first, with four Tony nominations and no win. He was born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1970 to Cuban parents and raised in Miami, and he studied drama and English at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, according to his Wikipedia biography.

His Broadway debut came in 2000 as Riff Raff in The Rocky Horror Show. He followed it as the Emcee in Cabaret, then Taboo, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Company, The Homecoming, Speed-the-Plow, Arcadia and, in 2012, Leap of Faith. That last one is the most recent Broadway credit on his record.

The nominations tell the rest. Here is the run, gathered by Suite 646 from his published credits.

2004, Taboo, Featured Actor in a Musical. 2007, Company, Actor in a Musical. 2008, The Homecoming, Featured Actor in a Play. 2009, Speed-the-Plow, Actor in a Play.

That is four nominations in four different categories in six seasons. Wikipedia notes he is only the second performer, after Boyd Gaines, to be nominated in all four acting categories.

What Is Galileo About?

Galileo is a rock musical about the scientist whose discoveries put him on trial before the Church. Danny Strong wrote the book. Zoe Sarnak and Michael Weiner wrote the score. Michael Mayer, a Tony winner who directed Spring Awakening, directs, and David Neumann choreographs, according to Broadway.com.

The producers, Amanda Lipitz, Henry Tisch and Jordan Roth, describe it as a story about the tension between truth and power. In October they added three famous names from the science world as co-producers, Playbill reported. Mae Jemison, the former NASA astronaut, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who directs the Hayden Planetarium uptown.

Society needs it now more than ever.

That is Tyson, in Playbill's report. Jemison called the story "both universal and personal."

The company around Esparza is deep. Jeremy Kushnier returns from the world premiere as Barberini, the churchman who becomes Pope Urban VIII. Joy Woods, a Tony nominee from Gypsy, plays Galileo's daughter Virginia. Javier Muñoz and Bradley Dean are in the cast. Michael Park, the Grammy winner from Dear Evan Hansen, will play the title role at certain performances, Playbill reports. Anyone set on seeing Esparza should check the schedule before buying.

How Did It Get From a College Stage to the Shubert?

Slowly, and with Esparza in the middle the whole way. Our own timeline, built from the published record, runs like this.

June 2019. Esparza leads a single reading of the show at the Susan Stein Shiva Theater at Vassar College, up the Hudson in Poughkeepsie, Broadway.com notes.

May 2024. Galileo has its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California, with Mayer directing and Esparza in the lead.

2025. The Bay Area's critics circle gives the Berkeley production six awards, including best production and, for Esparza, principal performance in a musical.

February 10, 2026. Mayer announces the Broadway transfer at a touring-industry conference in Miami.

November 10, 2026. First preview at the Shubert. Opening follows 26 days later, on December 6.

That is seven years and five months from a college reading room to a Broadway first preview.

The Berkeley reviews help explain why. KQED's David John Chávez wrote that Esparza "digs mightily into every ounce of his scintillating, grizzled register," and said the composers "unleash consecutive bangers." The New York critics get their say in December.

A Scientist Who Looks Like a Rock Star

The poster is already on the street, and it is not shy. In a piece on the key art, Broadway News reports that it was shot in photographer Andrew Eccles's California studio, and that the brief from the agency came down to one question, as Eccles recalls it. "How do you make a scientist look like a rock star?"

The answer, per Broadway News, was a lot of haze and lasers. The image shows Esparza backlit against a field of stars, the astronomer turned into an eclipse. For the launch video, a capsule was sent to the edge of space from a field in Germany.

It is a lot of spectacle for the story of a man the Church forced to recant. That tension is the show's whole bet.

When Can You See It?

Previews begin Tuesday, November 10, at the Shubert Theatre, and opening night is Sunday, December 6. Tickets are sold through Telecharge, and the production's site is GalileoMusical.com.

November 10 is a busy night on West 44th and 45th Streets. Rosamund Pike begins previews of Inter Alia at the Music Box the same evening, a debut we wrote about in September. On October 31, Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell start their run of Much Ado About Nothing at the Winter Garden. The fall is crowded with stars from the screen.

Esparza is the rare one coming home. He spent six seasons in a Manhattan courtroom on television, arguing cases. On 44th Street he gets to argue one about the sky.