Aniara

’Aniara’ is the name of one of the huge space craft in Karl-Birger Blomdahl’s science fiction opera used to evacuate people from the radiation-polluted earth to Mars. With 8000 passengers on board, it deviates from its course due to technical problems and is lost in space with no way of reaching its destination. Doomed to an endless odyssey, the people on board cling to absurd rituals, pay homage to the computer which is regarded as godlike and search for distraction in orgiastic excess only to realise that it is impossible to escape the final catastrophe. Based on the epic poem by Harry Martinson (for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974), Aniara was hugely acclaimed at its 1959 Stockholm première and became the most successful Swedish contemporary opera of its period with more than 100 performances in Stockholm alone.