The Conifers

A new opera by Joel Rust and David Troupes

Four people are waiting to be evacuated from a dying planet. It’s not Earth but an artificial world, a piece of rock terraformed to grow trees: a planet-sized timber farm. But something has gone wrong, the trees aren’t growing anymore, and the company has decided to cut its losses and evacuate.

And so the last inhabitants of this minimal world converge on a hangar, waiting for the dropship which will carry them away. As the curtain comes up the ship is nine hours late, on a world where nothing is late. Has the company abandoned them? Has something gone wrong? They tell stories, confront memories, plan their futures, and argue, until — amid their escalating alarm — the planet itself begins to assert its own strange music.


The Conifers is scored for four singers (two sopranos, alto, and bass-baritone), ten instruments (flute, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, electric guitar, percussion, violin, viola, cello, and double bass), and electronics, and will last 70-80 minutes.

It has been developed through a Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowship, which culminated in a showcase of twenty-five minutes of the opera — highlights from which are above. The opera's instrumental introduction and conclusion, which highlight the mixing of the acoustic and electronic sounds, have also been performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble as Wilding Pine — featured below.


We want to realise a full production of The Conifers and would love to talk to producers and presenters – please get in touch if you're interested. The Conifers speaks to both current and timeless issues and, as a chamber piece, requires modest resources.

  • The ecological catastrophe which creates its backdrop is highly relevant to the biggest issue our world faces, and which many people are engaged with.
  • The plot highlights the impact of the environment on the emotional and spiritual lives of humans; how alienation from the land on which we live disrupts our identities and affects our relationships.
  • Its libretto presents these complex ideas accessibly and engagingly, bridging the colloquial and the poetic, the quotidian and the otherworldly.
  • The Conifers is scored for four singers, ten instruments, and electronics, and with only one scene — in a near-deserted hangar — staging is straightforward, and would suit a wide range of spaces and venues.
  • The electronic part represents the “voice” of the planet, which is gradually revealed as a persona in its own right; the combination of this with the instruments and voices creates a lush and distinctive sound-world.

Many of these qualities can be seen in the full recording of the showcase at Snape Maltings, below. A perusal score of the completed sections of the opera is available here.


About us

Joel Rust is a composer and sound artist who creates works across a variety of media. His recent works and works-in-progress include an opera, interactive installations, audiovisual ambient electronica, pieces for “Zoom choir,” and a song cycle about summoning angels. He has received commissions from artists and groups in the UK, USA, and France, and his works appear on recordings by Discantus, The Hermes Experiment, and the Choir of King’s College, London. Recently, he was a winner of the Molinari Quartet's Composition Competition. He has served on the faculty of New York University and Emory University, and completed his studies at NYU, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Harvard, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

David Troupes has published two collections of poetry, and his creative work, including prose and sequential/comic art, appears widely in journals and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic. Ted Hughes and Christianity, a book grown from his doctoral research, was published by Cambridge University Press.

The cover image is by David Troupes.