This gives the words a certain weight, commanding respect, that they would not otherwise have. Peter Sellers was largely responsible for putting it together, and his basic approach was praiseworthy: he compiled most of it from the actual surviving writings of the men and women involved in the Manhattan project. Even by the lacklustre standards characteristic of opera libretti over the centuries, the libretto of Doctor Atomic has its problems. One cannot put a nuclear detonation on-stage and do it justice, so Adams and Sellers wisely leave the culmination of the drama largely to the imagination.Ī peril, for English speakers, of listening to operas composed in English is that one can understand the words. The dramatic arc of the opera, in fact, brings us right up to the edge, and allows us to peek over. Now, there is a certain risk in writing an opera about an event in modern history, such events being generally remote from the legendary or romantic subjects that are grand opera’s native turf, but that night in the New Mexico desert, when the raw destructive power latent in nature was unleashed for the first time, is worthy of the treatment, and it must be said that Adams, along with his collaborator, Peter Sellers, go to it with admirable seriousness and creative ambition.Īs is fitting, there is a sense of foreboding that hovers over the entire work, as though these men and women stand on the brink of a precipice. It is peopled by the scientists and soldiers of Los Alamos - Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, and General Groves among them - and, presumably on the grounds that one cannot have an opera with no female characters (although it has been done, and done well), Kitty Oppenheimer and her Pueblo Indian housemaid also appear. In fact there is quite a bit of dancing in this opera.ĭoctor Atomic is set near the close of the Second World War, in the hours leading up to the first atomic bomb test. Much of the interest is in the rhythms, and Adams’ rhythms are those of dancers, not machines. Adams is often grouped together with the other American minimalists, like Philip Glass or Terry Riley, but his music is warmer and more human than theirs. If you’ve heard John Adams’ music before, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what to expect here it sounds just like him.
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