Video: Raúl Esparza Is ‘Over the Moon’ About His Broadway Return in GALILEO

Raúl Esparza has spent plenty of time on stages and screens, but this summer brought him back to one of his favorite places: the Delacorte Theater.

BroadwayWorld’s Richard Ridge caught up with Esparza backstage during his run as Leontes in The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park production of The Winter’s Tale, which concluded just last weekend. For Esparza, returning to the newly renovated Delacorte was particularly meaningful.

“This place is sacred space,” he said. “The Delacorte is just one of the most extraordinary New York institutions. And the feeling of doing this in the park and the city all around you and the helicopters and the airplanes and the animals and the people shouting and then the life of the city and the lights going and the breezes—it just never gets old. It’s amazing.”

The Winter’s Tale marked Esparza’s third Shakespeare in the Park appearance, following Twelfth Night in 2009 and Cymbeline in 2015. This time around, the four-time Tony Award nominee had another major New York stage engagement on the horizon: his long-awaited Broadway return in the new musical Galileo.

Esparza will play the title role when the musical begins performances at the Shubert Theatre on November 10. The production marks his first Broadway appearance in 14 years. “I’m over the moon about it,” he said.

“Galileo [is] a really resonant story for the way we’re living right now,” Esparza continued. “There are so many parallels, unfortunately, to the terrible ways we’re living right now politically, socially, and the sort of constant fear about saying the truth that resonate. It’s also a story of an iconoclast that is exciting to tell. The score is so fun to sing. It’s all pop rock, and it’s great music, but set in a Renaissance stadium.”

The new musical, featuring a book by Danny Strong and music and lyrics by Zoe Sarnak and Michael Weiner, reunites Esparza with director Michael Mayer, who was his acting teacher when Esparza was 18. The Broadway production will also star Jeremy Kushnier and Joy Woods and officially opens December 6.

For Esparza, moving from Shakespeare in Central Park to a brand-new Broadway musical is another chapter in a career that has allowed him to move freely between plays, musicals, film and television. But no matter the medium, he says there is still nothing quite like performing for a live audience.

“Nothing matches that. Just nothing, period,” he said. “And so to be here doing a Shakespeare piece, to be performing as Leontes in The Winter’s Tale with this exquisite cast in this city saying these words for an audience that is thrilled to be here, there’s genuinely nothing better. I pinch myself every night.”