Music: Opera in Space

After the nuclear explosion that atomized the planet Doris, the scientist named Mimarobe was seized by the space cadets and thrown into Captain Chefone's dungeon, accused of fouling the radiation apparatus that powered the electronic brain. As presented in Stockholm's Royal Opera House last week, this kind of interstellar meller was meant not for science-fiction escapists but for devotees of avant-garde music. Occasion: the premiere of Swedish Composer Karl-Birger Blomdahl's Aniara, widely hailed as the first operatic excursion into the world of outer space.

Based on a "space cycle" by Swedish Poet Harry Martinson, Aniara proved to be a lengthy allegory about...