Composer Jennifer Walshe introduces Irish National Opera's production of her opera MARS, composed by Jennifer with a libretto by Mark O’Connell, which runs at the Abbey Theatre this August following an acclaimed World Premiere at this year's Galway International Arts Festival.
I recently read an interview with the astronaut Chris Hadfield where he noted that he has been as astronaut for over 20 years, but has spent only a precious six months in space. I'd like to think this opera has something in common with Hadfield’s experience.
A mere two hours long, it’s nonetheless the result of years of thinking about Mars, a fascination which began for me as a child looking at photos of the red planet in a copy of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. Along the way my research led me to the sounds of NASA’s Perseverance rover trundling over the regolith of Mars, recordings of whistlers, plasma waves and cosmic background radiation, sonifications of light curves of exoplanets millions of miles away.
I spent weeks trying to figure out how to use musical instruments to simulate the sonic environment inside a spacesuit, how many balloons to tie to a double bass bow to simulate Martian gravity, which is 38% that of Earth’s. I downloaded lists of the synth-heavy music astronauts uploaded to the International Space Station (a lot of Mike Oldfield and Vangelis), read mission transcripts from the Gemini and Apollo missions, discussed how a trumpet might degrade over time in a Martian habitat on the Space Exploration Stack Exchange.
to simulate the sonic environment inside a spacesuit'
I held a Martian meteorite in my hands at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, read countless sci-fi books, left livestreams of spacewalks playing on a screen in the corner of my studio as I worked. I considered a life where communication with loved ones back home can only ever be through text messages and voicemails. The fact that on the night of the opera’s Dublin opening at the Abbey Theatre, a message leaving Earth will take 14 minutes and 54 seconds to reach Mars.
Irish National Opera’s production of MARS is at the Abbey Theatre from the 7th until the 9th of August - find out more here
