What is the storyline of Doctor 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 type of opera is Doctor Atomic?
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.
Who is the librettist for Doctor Atomic?
Peter Sellars
Doctor Atomic/Librettists
Doctor Atomic is an opera in two acts composed by John Adams on a libretto by Peter Sellars. It pictures the United States at the end of World War II and the beginning of the atomic era.
Who is the title character of Adams’s Doctor Atomic?
Oppie
Robert Oppenheimer, director of the supersecretive Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. The libretto and music center on the clock-ticking tension leading to the test and on the personalities associated with accomplishing it. With estimable skill, Ryan McKinny portrays Oppie, as the title character is called.
Who is Doctor Atomic in John Adams opera Doctor Atomic?
In the case of “Doctor Atomic” himself (Oppenheimer), Sellars drew primarily from three vastly different sources that the physicist knew and loved: the 17-century English poet John Donne, the 19-century French poet Charles Baudelaire, and the Hindu sacred text called the Bhagavad Gita.
What did John Adams win for On the Transmigration of Souls?
John Adams took on a major responsibility when, shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, he accepted the assignment to compose music for New York Philharmonic performances marking the first anniversary of the attacks. The piece ended up earning him a Pulitzer Prize.
Which character sings the aria Batter my heart?
It’s Adams’s haunting setting of John Donne’s paradoxical “Holy Sonnet: Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God” which ends the first act. On this recording, it’s sung by baritone Gerald Finley who created the role of the tormented Oppenheimer.
What was Peter Sellers contribution to Dr Atomic?
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).
Who wrote the opera Dr Atomic?
“Doctor Atomic” is an opera by John Adams and Peter Sellars about the first atom bomb test. It had its world premiere in San Francisco in 2005. A new recording conducted by the composer himself has just been released.
Is John Adams a minimalist?
The music of Adams is usually categorized as minimalist or post-minimalist, although in an interview he said that his music is part of the ‘post-style’ era at the end of the twentieth century. While Adams employs minimalist techniques, such as repeating patterns, he is not a strict follower of the movement.
Why did John Adams write On the Transmigration of Souls?
That direction was to focus on the loss and grief expressed by those who were left behind. Adams didn’t look to poets past or present for his texts. Instead he chose words scribbled on posters plastered around Ground Zero by families searching for and mourning their loved ones.
Who wrote the text heard here?
-The text is by John Donne.
Who are the main characters in 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. J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, is the central character of the opera.
What was the text of the love scene in Doctor Atomic?
Thus, Sellars and Adams chose to use a Baudelaire poem as the text for a love scene between the two.
Who is the composer of the opera Doctor Atomic?
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.
When does the opera Doctor Atomic take place?
The opera begins in June of 1945, a few weeks before the Trinity Test. Since Germany’s surrender in May, a group of scientists working on the bomb have begun to harbor misgivings about the planned use of the bomb against Japan. Robert Wilson circulates a petition intended for President Truman.
