Those Swedes, with their Midsummer celebrations…

Regional madness aside, “Aniara” carries a universal message. It’s not a happy opera, but it is a compelling one. Somber, inevitable, and unafraid to confront the grim truth, “Aniara” pushes beyond our solar system into the spiritual void.

With its polyglot embrace of serialism, electronic music, and jazz, the work is rarely-heard, but worth checking out. The recording is long out of print and quite pricey on the collectors’ market. I broke into a cold sweat when I found my copy at @[100064570938690:2048:Princeton Record Exchange]. There’s also a Swedish film, based on the original poem (not the opera), from 2018.

Listen and despair this afternoon at 3:00 EDT. In terms of Scandinavian art, “Aniara” does Edvard Munch one better – in space, no one can hear you scream.