Opera in one act, premiered on Dec 1, 2022.
Hailed by audience and reviewers, The Tale of the Great Computing Machine had its world premiere in the Reactor Hall of KTH – 25 meters below ground – on December 1, 2022.
https://www.operamecatronica.com/the-tale-of-the-great-computing-machine/
The opera is based on a book, written by Hannes Alfvén in 1966. Alfvén – awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1970 – had a deep and visionary understanding of the future of technology. In the book, Alfvén envisages a great deal of the developments we are already a part of today. His descriptions – partly disturbing and partly humorous – of the future relationship between humans and technology makes it continuously relevant. Transforming the monologue in the original book into a libretto, required many creative interventions and ideas; such as the invention of the six roles as well as their role-names: Computa, Carbon, Oxygeni, Hydrogenii, Argon and Nitritio. These names are based on the gases present in the Earth’s atmosphere – with the addition of the feminized version of the voice from the future (in accordance with Hannes Alfvén´s Swedish original). In collaboration with Nils Spangenberg from the Vadstena-Academy, a libretto was written by Åsa and Carl Unander-Scharin and put to music by Carl. In the artistic rendering of the book, the Opera Mecatronica-tandem (Åsa and Carl U-S) are using a long range of their custom-built artistic technologies, as well as creating new artifacts for this particular opera.