Grand opera: Doctor Atomic
Last night I spent the evening watching DVDs of the John Adams opera Doctor Atomic. Oh. My. God. It was incredibly powerful. It's about Robert Oppenheimer and the testing of the first atomic bomb.
I had never heard of this before two weeks ago, when the NY Met performance was on the radio. It was so intriguing I went online to read about it and found there was a DVD of an earlier production by the San Francisco Opera and I was able to get it on interlibrary loan. Netflix doesn't have it.
The libretto is by Peter Sellars and is woven together from literary and primary sources, using poetry by John Donne, Muriel Rukeyser and Baudelaire; memos and transcripts of meetings from the Manhattan Project and conversations as attested later by participants.
Since it's opera, the story is stripped down to its barest essentials and the music, text, sets, costumes, and choreography are all in the service of the conflicts and emotions inherent in the situation. There is division between Oppenheimer and the other scientists about whether the bomb should be completed (and thus taken out of their hands) after Germany's surrender ends the European half of World War II. There's lingering uncertainty among the scientists about whether the test itself will ignite the atmosphere and destroy the earth.
And the end of Act I is incredibly intense, with Oppenheimer (alone on stage with "the gadget") singing John Donne's sonnet Batter my heart, three-person'd God:
...Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved faine,
But am betrothed unto your enemy,
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again... (lines 9-11)
Donne's verse ends with the poet begging God to rescue him from evil, but in the staging there's a feeling of finality as Oppenheimer sings line 10: [I] am betrothed unto your enemy. He disappears then under the veil shrouding the bomb, and as he sings the last four lines -- take me to you... -- he can be seen only as a shadow.
The people who have to wait in great anxiety for the test outcome are represented by Oppenheimer's wife Kitty. The people whose land is being used for the testing (undoubtedly without consent) are represented by Pasqualina, one of the Native American woman employed by the scientists' families in Los Alamos. She and Kitty Oppenheimer are the alto and soprano leads, respectively. The chorus and ballet corps included a number of Asian Americans, a stark reminder of the people the bomb would be used against. I'm curious now to find out to what extent the historical accounts of this event paid any attention to the interests of the Native peoples of the area. I'm guessing not a lot.
This is what opera should be. I've always found opera enjoyable in occasional doses because the music, sets and costumes all make for a grand spectacle even when the plots are hackneyed and trivial. Which sadly, so many of them are. Using opera to explore something like the moment when human beings became able to destroy the earth is a much better use of the medium.
ETA: I found myself wondering about Oppenheimer's religious beliefs, because of the Donne poetry. His family was Jewish, according to Wikipedia. Which makes it potentially very presumptuous for the librettist to give his character the words that use such deeply Christian symbolism. Although, both the program notes and online sources state that Oppenheimer was familar with Donne's poetry and that he himself had later written that he was referring to it when he named the bomb test site "Trinity." (This reminds me, there was a line during Kitty and Pasqualina's first scene, while one of them is holding the baby, that made me think of the story of Abraham and Isaac. I need to watch it again though, b/c that's all I can remember.)
I had never heard of this before two weeks ago, when the NY Met performance was on the radio. It was so intriguing I went online to read about it and found there was a DVD of an earlier production by the San Francisco Opera and I was able to get it on interlibrary loan. Netflix doesn't have it.
The libretto is by Peter Sellars and is woven together from literary and primary sources, using poetry by John Donne, Muriel Rukeyser and Baudelaire; memos and transcripts of meetings from the Manhattan Project and conversations as attested later by participants.
Since it's opera, the story is stripped down to its barest essentials and the music, text, sets, costumes, and choreography are all in the service of the conflicts and emotions inherent in the situation. There is division between Oppenheimer and the other scientists about whether the bomb should be completed (and thus taken out of their hands) after Germany's surrender ends the European half of World War II. There's lingering uncertainty among the scientists about whether the test itself will ignite the atmosphere and destroy the earth.
And the end of Act I is incredibly intense, with Oppenheimer (alone on stage with "the gadget") singing John Donne's sonnet Batter my heart, three-person'd God:
...Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved faine,
But am betrothed unto your enemy,
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again... (lines 9-11)
Donne's verse ends with the poet begging God to rescue him from evil, but in the staging there's a feeling of finality as Oppenheimer sings line 10: [I] am betrothed unto your enemy. He disappears then under the veil shrouding the bomb, and as he sings the last four lines -- take me to you... -- he can be seen only as a shadow.
The people who have to wait in great anxiety for the test outcome are represented by Oppenheimer's wife Kitty. The people whose land is being used for the testing (undoubtedly without consent) are represented by Pasqualina, one of the Native American woman employed by the scientists' families in Los Alamos. She and Kitty Oppenheimer are the alto and soprano leads, respectively. The chorus and ballet corps included a number of Asian Americans, a stark reminder of the people the bomb would be used against. I'm curious now to find out to what extent the historical accounts of this event paid any attention to the interests of the Native peoples of the area. I'm guessing not a lot.
This is what opera should be. I've always found opera enjoyable in occasional doses because the music, sets and costumes all make for a grand spectacle even when the plots are hackneyed and trivial. Which sadly, so many of them are. Using opera to explore something like the moment when human beings became able to destroy the earth is a much better use of the medium.
ETA: I found myself wondering about Oppenheimer's religious beliefs, because of the Donne poetry. His family was Jewish, according to Wikipedia. Which makes it potentially very presumptuous for the librettist to give his character the words that use such deeply Christian symbolism. Although, both the program notes and online sources state that Oppenheimer was familar with Donne's poetry and that he himself had later written that he was referring to it when he named the bomb test site "Trinity." (This reminds me, there was a line during Kitty and Pasqualina's first scene, while one of them is holding the baby, that made me think of the story of Abraham and Isaac. I need to watch it again though, b/c that's all I can remember.)