Space opera

ESA’s Hertz radio frequency test chamber will be playing a supporting role in a forthcoming production at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam.

The cavernous foam-lined space – located in ESA’s ESTEC technical centre in the Netherlands – was filmed by a team from filming company WE ARE WILL, along with a neighbouring clean room, to serve as a futuristic backdrop to the events on stage.

In next year’s Upload, a father and daughter travel to a very special clinic. The parent wants to give up his physical body and have his mind uploaded into a digital version of himself, to try and escape past trauma and achieve immortality. But why did he make this choice, and how will this change his relationship with his daughter?

 “The show is a hybrid of styles, set well into the future,” explains Michel Van der Aa, composer and director of the opera.

“Hertz was one of the first places I thought of to suggest that setting, from a magazine photo in my ideas folder. The locations will be seen on stage largely as filmed, projected onto layers of screens like a box around the performers, to represent their physical surroundings. 

‘Hertz is an amazing, very theatrical looking space – which doubles in our production as the clinic’s scanning chamber. Then, for our climax, final stage of the uploading takes place in the other chamber we filmed at ESTEC, a clean room for satellite storage inside the Test Centre.”

Upload receives its premiere in Amsterdam on 20 March 2021, with tickets on sale soon, before going on tour to Germany, Austria and the US.