Cosmic opera

Poussières d'Etoiles (Stardust), a multisensory experience in Paris.

Eye of the beholder: the second act of Poussières d'Etoiles shows the development of the Universe. Credit: CSI/B. BAUDIN/LE BAR FLORÉAL

Technology and imagination act symbiotically in the 'cosmic opera' Poussières d'Etoiles (Stardust). Conceived by Philippe Corbin and designed for the cavernous hall of the Cité des Sciences on the outskirts of Paris, it addresses the senses of sight, hearing and smell. With few words, the three-act, anti-anthropocentric show tells us that we are made up of atoms formed in stars that may have died before our Sun was born.

Spectators walk into a complex light show that takes up all 50,000 cubic metres of the hall, and are greeted by a smell of damp earth and sounds that move from pure frequencies to scratching, chattering electronic music. Light images of immense butterflies take wing. The situation is intended to place the spectators outside their normal dimensions and prepare them for their virtual journey from the Big Bang to the creation of life on Earth.

The second act begins with the activation of escalators that carry spectators to luminous sofas on the mezzanine level. Here they lie and watch, for 30 absorbing minutes, a breathtaking series of images projected onto the 2,400-square-metre ceiling. Many of the images are from the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers may recognize the Horsehead nebula, the Hubble Towers (interstellar clouds) and the Pleiades star cluster, which go by without comment as the Universe develops.

The music, like the Universe, becomes more structured, eventually taking the form of an operatic libretto, although without significant text. The composer, Nicolas Frize, says that the celestial bodies have neither soul nor feeling, so literal dialogue in a libretto would be out of place.

For the final act, after the Earth has made its first appearance in the virtual heavens, the voices of the choir evolve into drops of water, then torrential rain. The spectators look down the escalator and see the hall submerging in virtual floods as the Earth's primeval oceans fill. They descend to watch the first organic molecules appearing in the oceans, then see life emerging in all its forms. The smell of perfumed humidity, like a sauna, pervades.

The glory of the show lies in the light-handed presentation of the beauty of astronomy and cosmology, which avoids didacticism. Frize's intelligent, evocative and moving music adds fundamentally to the poetry of the second act. But the show's weakness is its clumsy choreography of spectators, who are herded around like confused package tourists, often understanding what they should be experiencing only after the moment has passed.