Andrée’s arctic balloon expedition of 1897 was an effort to reach the North Pole in which all three Swedish expedition members – Salomon Andrée, Knut Frænkel, and Nils Strindberg – perished. After beginning the expedition on July 11, their records break off three months later. Thirty-three years later, their bodies were discovered and returned to Sweden, at which time the diaries and notebooks of Andrée and Strindberg were published.

In 1982, American composer Dominick Argento composed his tour-de-force song cycle depicting this harrowing journey through a commission from The Schubert Club of St. Paul. Most of the texts comes directly from the diary entries of the explorers; Frænkel left no account behind, but the text assigned to him comes partially from his companions’ writings.

In this 2022 semi-staged production, CSI joined forces with the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music to bring this dramatic story to life through an up-close and innovative audience experience at ARCO in Price Hill.