John Erik Eleby in the world premiere of The Tale of the Great Computing Machine

John Erik Eleby sings the role of Carbon in the world premiere of the opera The Tale of the Great Computing Machine, based on the book of the same title, written by Hannes Alfvén, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1970. The story is now being given a new form and interpreted in an innovative opera, produced by KTH and Stiftelsen Internationella Vadstena-Akademien under the artistic direction of Carl and Åsa Unander-Scharin. 

"The Tale of the Great Computing Machine was written in 1966 by KTH Professor and Nobel Laureate Hannes Alfvén. What was originally intended to be a bedtime story for his grandchildren gradually grew into an observation about our relationship with nature and technology.  The Tale of the Great Computing Machine is a story written in a distant future, where the significance of humans is reduced to an evolutionary step on the road to a wise and all-knowing computer. In the book, Alfvén envisages a great deal of the developments we are already a part of today, and the relationship between humans and technology makes it continuously relevant."

The opera is played in the KTH Reactor Hall - an experimental stage today, that originally housed Sweden’s first nuclear reactor. The premiere is on December 1 with firther performances until December 16.