Irish National Opera (INO) will take audiences on a virtual trip to Mars during next month’s Galway International Arts Festival.

In the darkly comic MARS, four astronauts and a sentient AI software interface are sealed into a spacecraft for nine months on a one-way mission to the red planet.

As they drift through the void, they binge-watch Real Housewives of Beverley Hills, spar over ideology and fall into existential unease. On arriving on Mars, in addition to dealing with the reality of life on an alien planet, they also have to cope with creeping authoritarianism, alienation and ideological extremism.

MARS is a collaboration between INO and leading opera companies in France, Austria, and the Netherlands that reimagines what opera can say and how it can say it.

Jennifer Walsh – described by the Irish Times as ‘the most original compositional voice to emerge from Ireland in the past 20 years’ –  was commissioned to write the music, with award-winning author Mark O’Connell wring the libretto.

They are promising an entertaining examination of science, astronomy, the environment, colonisation of space and how humans interact in extreme situations.

As they worked on creating this futuristic piece, they included “a good serving of hard science and black humour, in order to talk about today”, according to Jennifer Walshe.

She co-directs MARS with Tom Creed and it’s being conducted by Grammy-Award nominee Elaine Kelly. The cast includes sopranos Nina Guo and Jade Phoenix, and mezzo-sopranos Doreen Curran and Sarah Richmond.

It will premiere at the Arts Festival from July 25-27 and will be staged at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre from August 7-9.

For more information and booking, go to giaf.ie.

Pictured: MARS, a collaboration between Irish National Opera and companies in France, Austria and the Netherlands, will premiere in Galway next month.