Anyone who's seen Doctor Atomic, or clips of it on Youtube, will recognize the "Gadget," as the Manhattan Project scientists called it, above; there is an exact replica of the bomb onstage for the second act of the Met production (it was there for the entirety of the San Francisco version).
This site gives a brief history of the actual event that John Adams's opera dramatizes, the test of the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos in 1945.
H/T: The Big City
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10 comments:
Oh, Pentimento, I am very disappointed! Our local multiplex is showing many of the Met season operas, but not "Dr Atomic".
However, I would never have thought to look out for these if you hadn't looked up the information for me, so - thank you! I'll be able to see some of the others. "Peter Grimes" is the next up.
Cheers
Otepoti
Oh, that's a shame. But wait a bit - the Met is putting so much money and publicity behind "Doctor A" that I bet it won't be long before their version is out on DVD. In fact, you may be able to get it on their website. I hope it will be soon. The fact that the Met was throwing itself behind a new work of such great quality and importance was very exciting to me.
There was an interesting if a bit shallow article in the latest "slate" about the libretto to Dr Atomic. Did you see it?
(Surely the oddest line in all opera libretto is in Butterfly - "Whisky or milk?")
Cheers
Otepoti
Ah, milk PUNCH or whisky" - that makes a bit more sense.
I haven't read the article on Slate - will look for it. One of my colleagues in the audience for the final dress said he thought the Dr. A libretto was awful, but I thought it was wonderful.
I think the writer failed to grasp that physicists have very unusual minds, hence the "split skull" line. Was it taken from Oppenheimer's own writings/reported speech, do you know?
Otepoti
OK, I just glanced at Ron Rosenbaum's review on Slate. I disagree with him completely. I thought the use of pedestrian, American speech-patterned language in the libretto was inexplicably poignant, and served to underscore the fact that the men and women of the Manhattan Project were ordinary people tinkering with stuff and substance that should, in a perfect world, be only the province of God. The import of what the scientists were doing was something that so defies the imagination that the use of plain, non-poetic language for the libretto seemed to me a perfect fit for the inexorable and yet strangely low-key drama of the narrative. I do have to agree with Rosenbaum, though, about the love duet. I thought it was a bit stilted, including the text; but again, these are characters who know that they're playing with God's own tools, and they don't have the language to either describe that, or, especially in Oppenheimer's case, to ask for forgiveness.
Well put.
Otepoti
Hi, Otepoti.
The Netherlands Opera has released a DVD of Doctor Atomic on the Opus Arte label. It's the original production by Peter Sellars and you can get it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Adams-Doctor-Atomic-Finley/dp/B001BSH18O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1225131066&sr=8-1
Enjoy...
Sarah B
Thanks, Sarah.
Otepoti
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