Aniara - fragments of time and space

There are flashing lights (strobes) in the performance.

Original support for Aniara was provided to The Crossing by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Philadelphia.

I had imagined a paradise for them
but having left one that we destroyed
we had but the empty night of space as our home
an endless maw where no god heard us.

Harry Martinson’s words from the space epic Aniara maybe sound more ominous than ever. The story of the spaceship Aniara’s crew has inspired and fascinated composers, filmmakers and artists ever since its issue in 1956. A mere three years later, for example, Karl Birger Blomdahl and Erik Lindegren’s eponymous opera was premiered, and to this day it is held to be one of the greatest successes in the history of Swedish opera.

Martinson’s work comprises 103 songs about those on board Aniara, a spaceship that routinely transports to Venus and Mars 8,000 inhabitants of the planet Doris (Earth), which nuclear weapons and environmental destruction have rendered uninhabitable. The journey does not go as planned, and Aniara is soon shooting through space like a spear without aim or direction. On board the travellers seek solace in religion, sex and philosophy, and initially in Mima – a sort of omniscient computer on which is stored mankind’s entire history. Over time Mima comes to be seen more and more like a goddess, but it ultimately cannot cope with the burden of all the dreadful insights into the death of mankind. Aniara is in many ways a cosmic story of humanity at a crossroads.

Donald Nally, conductor and artistic director of the Grammy-winning chamber choir The Crossing, calls Aniara: fragments of time and space, a choral-theatre work, and it is a coproduction of the choir and Finland’s Klockriketeatern in collaboration with Wusheng Company and Finnish National Opera. The music is by Robert Maggio, an American composer who already has many chamber and choral works under his belt. The libretto is by Dan Henriksson, artistic director of Klockriketeatern, and is based on Martinson’s lyric poetry. The work has previously been successfully performed in Philadelphia, at Haarlem’s Koorbiennale and at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki.

Donald Nally describes Aniara: fragments of time and space and the work on this opus thus:
I want to create a work that
helps me understand chaos.
I want to create a work that
reminds me of the miracle of Planet Earth,
even though we are ourselves threatening that miracle.
I want to create a work that allows
me to see the world, and my emotional
reactions to it, with greater clarity.
I want to create a work that allows
me to understand those feelings.
Aniara does – and will do – this.