Right after Mars broke up, Sumner Crane got the idea to write a libretto and build a record around it. He enlisted fellow Mars members, Mark Cummingham and Connie Burg, plus DNA’s Ikue Mori, to work on the project. The quartet rehearsed the tracks for about a year before recording. DNA’s Arto Lindsay and his brother Duncan, also joined on the recordings of the album. The record was put out on Cunningham’s own label, Hyrax, in 1980.

In the early ’80s, some Italian fans made a video of the whole opera, but a copy of it has failed to surface. After John Gavanti stopped, Cunningham, Burg and Duncan Lindsay formed Don King.