Doctor Atomic
The Metropolitan Opera's new season makes up for a glaring omission, and none too soon. For the first time, the Met will present a work by one of the most gifted and compelling figures in American contemporary music, John Adams, 61. The work: Adams' 2005 opera Doctor Atomic, about the days leading up to the fateful test of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico in 1945.
Like Adams' previous operas, Nixon in China (1985) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1991), Doctor Atomic uses real events and people (its Faustian protagonist is the physicist in charge of building the bomb, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, who spars with colleagues like Dr. Edward Teller and the director of the project, Gen. Leslie Groves) to explore urgent issues of science, power, personal morality and political pragmatism. Peter Sellars' libretto weaves together historical documents, interview transcripts and scientific details. But Adams says, "I don't want people to think they're coming to a physics seminar. This is really an opera in which life-and-death matters hover over every moment. It's also an opera with sensuality and erotic beauty." Indeed, although Adams' dense score erupts with harsh dissonances, it also has moments of shimmering beauty.
Adams' bow at the Met will be attended by two other debuts. Doctor Atomic is being staged by British filmmaker-screenwriter Penny Woolcock, making her first foray into opera directing. With Alan Gilbert conducting at the Met for the first time, audiences can size up the new music director-designate of the New York Philharmonic. And not just Met audiences: the Nov. 8 performance will be beamed live via an HD video feed to more than 850 theaters in 30 countries.