Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. The work focuses on the great stress and anxiety experienced by those at Los Alamos while the test of the first atomic bomb (the "Trinity" test) was being prepared.
What is the opera Doctor Atomic about?
Doctor Atomic. Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. The work focuses on the great stress and anxiety experienced by those at Los Alamos while the test of the first atomic bomb (the "Trinity" test) was being prepared.
What is Doctor Atomic?
Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars.
Who is the mezzo singer of Doctor Atomic?
For the Metropolitan Opera Premiere, the role was again sung by a mezzo, Sasha Cooke. In 2007, Adams adapted the opera into the Doctor Atomic Symphony. Music was taken from the overture, various interludes and orchestral settings were made of arias like Oppenheimer's signature "Batter My Heart."
Who is the composer of Doctor Atomic?
Doctor Atomic. Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars.
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What is the subject of the opera Dr Atomic?
His Doctor Atomic explores a momentous episode in modern history: the invention and detonation of the first atomic bomb. The opera centers on Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant physicist who oversaw the Manhattan Project, the govern- ment project to develop atomic weaponry.
What is the plot of Dr Atomic?
on Doctor Atomic. Doctor Atomic concerns the final hours leading up to the first atomic bomb explosion at the Alamagordo test site in New Mexico in July of 1945. The focal characters are the physicist and Manhattan Project director, Dr. J.
What language is Doctor Atomic?
First produced in 2005, Doctor Atomic is an English-language opera about nuclear physicist J.
Who is Doctor Atomic?
Doctor Atomic is an opera composed by John Adams with a libretto by Peter Sellars. The opera, which premiered in 2005, takes place in the weeks leading up to the Trinity Test, the first-ever detonation of a nuclear weapon.
Which describes the melodic material of at the sight of this?
Terms in this set (16) Which describes the melodic material of "At the sight of this"? The Refrain of "At the sight of this," from Doctor Atomic, is the same as the A section.
Who wrote the text for the aria Batter my heart from Doctor Atomic quizlet?
The text of the poem is by John Donne and the phrase "three-person'd God" has significance to the story because Oppenheimer named the testing site for the bomb "Trinity." Listen to both excerpts from "Batter my heart." Then select the statements that describe the excerpts.
Who sings the aria at the sight of this from Doctor Atomic?
More videos on YouTube John Donne's sonnet “Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God” forms the text for Oppenheimer's powerful aria at the end of Act I, performed here by baritone, Gerald Finley.
Which physicist headed the team that developed the atomic bomb?
J. Robert OppenheimerJ. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) was an American theoretical physicist. During the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer was director of the Los Alamos Laboratory and responsible for the research and design of an atomic bomb. He is often known as the “father of the atomic bomb."
When was the Doctor Atomic opera premiered?
Date: Wednesday, June 20, 2018. Doctor Atomic is an opera composed by John Adams with a libretto by Peter Sellars. The opera, which premiered in 2005, takes place in the weeks leading up to the Trinity Test, the first-ever detonation of a nuclear weapon. J.
What is the significance of Doctor Atomic?
A well-researched work of historical fiction, Doctor Atomic does the important work of engaging with and inviting moral contemplation of the history of the atomic bomb.
What was the first Adams opera?
Sellars went on to direct the original production of Doctor Atomic, which was also the first Adams opera for which he contributed the libretto. Since Doctor Atomic, the composer-librettist duo has gone on to write two more operas, A Flowering Tree (2006) and Girls of the Golden West (2017).
What is the role of an opera producer?
Additionally, an opera needs a producer (or director) to coordinate the creative work, as well as administrative staff to take care of marketing, ticket sales, and other crucial functions. In short, producing an opera is a massive, and very expensive, undertaking.
What is an opera?
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines opera as “a staged drama set to music in its entirety, made up of vocal pieces with instrumental accompaniment and usually with orchestral overtures and interludes.” Opera is a complex and collaborative art form. An operatic work begins with the composer, who writes the music, and the librettist, who writes the words. A performance of an opera requires an orchestra, principal singers, usually dancers and a chorus, and designers of the set, props, costumes, and lighting. Additionally, an opera needs a producer (or director) to coordinate the creative work, as well as administrative staff to take care of marketing, ticket sales, and other crucial functions. In short, producing an opera is a massive, and very expensive, undertaking. As such, opera has historically been an art form for the elite.
Who is the nursemaid in Doctor Atomic?
In Doctor Atomic, Pasqualita is the Tewa nursemaid for Oppenheimers. Although there is no documentation of the Oppenheimer family having such a maid, many Tewa women were employed in domestic work in Los Alamos, so the inclusion of this character is plausible.
When did opera start?
Drawing on existing musical and theatrical traditions in Western society, opera first began to emerge in late sixteenth-century Florence. Throughout the 1600s, the opera spread to other Italian cities, including Rome, Naples, and Venice.
Who wrote the opera Doctor Atomic?
The Epic, Tragic, Operatic Inside Story of Doctor Atomic. Maverick composer John Adams set off a chain reaction in the opera world with his explosive works on Nixon and the Middle East. Now he's taking on the father of the A-bomb.
What is unusual about Doctor Atomic?
Doctor Atomic is unusual for the amount of sampling Adams has integrated into the score - people talking and babies crying and sirens wailing, as well as popular songs from the '40s. Most challenging of all, sonically, is the atomic bomb's blast as it detonates over the New Mexico desert.
What was the opera about the hijacking of the Achille Lauro?
In the early '90s, Sellars proposed an opera about the 1985 terrorist hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship. During the ordeal, hijackers shot 69-year-old wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer and dumped his body in the Mediterranean.
What was the first public account of the Manhattan Project?
But Sellars also had on hand the "Smyth Report," the first public account of the Manhattan Project, and even the "Los Alamos Primer," a recently declassified document written in 1943 to familiarize new arrivals with the science underlying what Oppenheimer had dubbed "the gadget.".
Where is Doctor Atomic?
Premiering in San Francisco and timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the first nuclear test, Doctor Atomic will later travel to Chicago ...
Who wrote the play "In the Matter of J Robert Oppenheimer"?
In 1966, a German TV producer named Heiner Kipphardt wrote a play, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which was assembled almost entirely from Oppenheimer's security-clearance hearing transcripts. Kipphardt added a final speech, in which he has the physicist declare, "We have been doing the work of the Devil.".
What did George Kotcher do?
He has, however, built turreted castles and baroque carriages and more pastoral landscapes than he can count. Kotcher is the San Francisco Opera's top scenic artist, and compared with those jobs, conjuring a Styrofoam replica of the plutonium bomb detonated in the New Mexico desert six decades ago is a cinch.
What is the Doctor Atomic about?
Advertisement. First produced in 2005, Doctor Atomic is an English-language opera about nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the first test of the atomic bomb he and his scientific team had assembled at Los Alamos in 1945. It was the test that would decide whether the bomb was ready to be dropped on Japan.
What does John Adams say about the atomic bomb?
Consider how John Adams tells us to interpret his climax: First, he admits that “no operatic evocation of an atomic bomb could go head to head with the dazzling effects available to a Hollywood director …” (Which slyly neglects the fact that you don’t need a Hollywood director—actual horrifying footage of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki are available and could, in fact “go head to head” with anything an opera designer substituted to show off his “creativity.”)
What does Faust cry out for?
But, predictably, when it comes time to carry out his part of the bargain and descend to hell, Faust cries out for a reprieve, for divine mercy. At the end of Christopher Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, when Faust’s ticket to hell is about to be punched, he cries out: Advertisement.
Who was the atomic scientist who analyzed the Los Alamos test?
And on the conflicts among—and within—the atomic scientists assembled by Oppenheimer.
Who is Oppenheimer, our Faust?
Oppenheimer, our Faust! The man who turned the equations of the theoretical physicists—like Faust’s arcane devil-raising spells—into the weapon that changed the world and that may still be the instrument of its destruction, our Götterdämmerung. Advertisement.
Does Sellars make it clear in his libretto?
Sellars does not make it clear in his libretto what—if anything—he wrote and what he “appropriated.”. But clearly he has a career as a curator of bad poetry. His “appropriations” sound fake-profound when not merely ridiculous (the way they might not sound in context).
Overview
Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. The work focuses on the great stress and anxiety experienced by those at Los Alamos while the test of the first atomic bomb (the "Trinity" test) was being prepared. In 2007, a documentary was made about the creation of the opera, ti…
Composition history
The first act takes place about a month before the bomb is to be tested, and the second act is set in the early morning of July 16, 1945 (the day of the test). During the second act, time frequently slows down for the characters and then snaps back into reality. The opera ends in the final, prolonged moment before the bomb is detonated. Although the original commission for the opera suggested that U.S. physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," be fashion…
Performance history
In June 2007 this production made its European première at De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam. It then opened in December 2007 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, again directed by Sellars, with Finley and Owens reprising their roles. Adams and Sellars made "some significant changes" to the opera and production in response to feedback from the San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Chicago productions.
Roles
1. ^ Hubbard's first name is also given as "Jack" in some sources.
Adams had written the role of Kitty Oppenheimer for the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. However, she was unable to commit to the project due to her health (she died soon after the work premiered). The work was sung in the world premiere by mezzo Kristine Jepson. For the second major production, at De Ne…
Doctor Atomic Symphony
In 2007, Adams adapted the opera into the Doctor Atomic Symphony. Music was taken from the overture, various interludes and orchestral settings were made of arias like Oppenheimer's signature "Batter My Heart." The work was first premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conducted by the composer on August 21, 2007, at a BBC Proms concert. The work was later performed at Carnegie Hall in Spring 2008. Originally composed in four movements and lasting 4…
Recordings
• 2008: DVD widescreen DTS sound; or Blu-ray widescreen Dolby True HD sound with Gerald Finley as J. Robert Oppenheimer; conductor: Lawrence Renes; Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus; Studio: Opus Arte
• 2012: Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording-winning audio recording with Gilbert, Finley, Cooke, Fink, Glenn, Metropolitan Opera, 2008 Sony
See also
• Copenhagen, a play by Michael Frayn about a 1941 meeting of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in Copenhagen
External links
• Doctor Atomic, John Adams' website
• Synopsis, Metropolitan Opera
• The Making of the Doctor Atomic Libretto – Details the sources and quotes in the libretto
• Detailed synopsis