Part of the 2019 Tête-à-Tête Opera Festival - a small-scale opera to mark the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing
* political satire includes Apollo, the sun-god, as 'President Trump'
text includes
* NASA transcript of the flight recordings
* Buzz Aldrin's memoirs
* speeches by Kennedy and Nixon
* Trump's bragging of sexual assault
Once upon a time, fifty years ago, Apollo (the sun-god) was President of Everything, while his dim sister (the moon-goddess) was just a cabaret artiste in a seedy nightclub. As the Americans invade the moon in July 1969, events downtown take a sinister turn and chaos ensues. Can the gods sort it out or is the “dickhead” President too dysfunctional? Adding a bonkers twist to the Apollo 11 commemorations, a talented cast presents a fun-opera that investigates our fascination for all things lunar. Apollo’s Mission confuses fact with fiction, earth with moon, god-like humans with a Trump-like god, and then with now.
An array of musical styles from Josquin to jazz are also put though the blender. Featuring newcomer Natasha Agarwal as the goddess Selena - aka cabaret artiste - who’s as drawn to the astronauts as they are to her, but vulnerable in the face of their invasion. When President 'Dickhead' Nixon said that "the heavens had become part of man's world", Buzz Aldrin was celebrating communion on the moon. As the gods are invoked, rising young baritone Dominic Bowe plays Selena’s all-powerful brother Apollo whose presence is profoundly disappointing. The plot almost stalls in a Rossini-like ensemble (What’s surreal and what’s true?) but then a galloping finale quoting President Kennedy asserts Selena’s victory over them all.