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Doctor Atomic
Dec. 15th, 2007 12:13 amI can't go to bed without writing about this opera. Has anyone else seen it? I was absolutely stunned and overwhelmed.
If you don't know it, it's John Adams' & Peter Sellars' opera about Robert Oppenheimer and the first a-bomb test at Los Alamos. Sellars' libretto is taken almost entirely from contemporary documents and letters, and from poetry (including a deliriously lush setting of a poem by Baudelaire, and an equally intense one of a poem by John Donne). Much of Oppenheimer's words are from the Bhagavad-Gita, a work he loved so much that he learned Sanskrit in order to read the original.
The tension between the desire for knowledge and the fear of what that knowledge might (would) bring to the world, and the idea of a bad thing created to prevent a worse thing and then becoming worse than that*, was palpably presented. (I had not known, before I read the Lyric's study guide, that there was a real fear that the test might create so much heat as to set fire to the atmosphere, and destroy the world.) Those who are much younger than I may not understand how surprising it is to see Edward Teller presented at the voice of moderation, but to my generation he was the personification of the arms race, the developer of the hydrogen bomb, the original Dr. Strangelove. The opera merely hints at what will happen later to Dr. Oppenheimer; I wonder if those who don't know will understand.
The production was excellent all around, but kudos particularly to the lighting designer- stunning work, especially the end which was like color photographic negatives. Absolute silence at the end, and then wild applause.
This is the second opera of Adams' I've seen. The first was Nixon in China, which, to my surprise, I also liked very much. Chicago Opera Theatre is doing his The Flowering Tree next spring - something I am now definitely looking forward to!
*Odd. As I write this, I realize that this is exactly what Larry Mondello was talking about in his review of I am Legend on NPR's "All Things Considered" this evening!
If you don't know it, it's John Adams' & Peter Sellars' opera about Robert Oppenheimer and the first a-bomb test at Los Alamos. Sellars' libretto is taken almost entirely from contemporary documents and letters, and from poetry (including a deliriously lush setting of a poem by Baudelaire, and an equally intense one of a poem by John Donne). Much of Oppenheimer's words are from the Bhagavad-Gita, a work he loved so much that he learned Sanskrit in order to read the original.
The tension between the desire for knowledge and the fear of what that knowledge might (would) bring to the world, and the idea of a bad thing created to prevent a worse thing and then becoming worse than that*, was palpably presented. (I had not known, before I read the Lyric's study guide, that there was a real fear that the test might create so much heat as to set fire to the atmosphere, and destroy the world.) Those who are much younger than I may not understand how surprising it is to see Edward Teller presented at the voice of moderation, but to my generation he was the personification of the arms race, the developer of the hydrogen bomb, the original Dr. Strangelove. The opera merely hints at what will happen later to Dr. Oppenheimer; I wonder if those who don't know will understand.
The production was excellent all around, but kudos particularly to the lighting designer- stunning work, especially the end which was like color photographic negatives. Absolute silence at the end, and then wild applause.
This is the second opera of Adams' I've seen. The first was Nixon in China, which, to my surprise, I also liked very much. Chicago Opera Theatre is doing his The Flowering Tree next spring - something I am now definitely looking forward to!
*Odd. As I write this, I realize that this is exactly what Larry Mondello was talking about in his review of I am Legend on NPR's "All Things Considered" this evening!
