batter my heart from doctor atomic oppenheimer

The gravitas of this opera, however, is in the haunting music, the dramatic sets, and especially in the subject matter itself, for seemingly commonplace dialogue is rapidly elevated when the topic is whether uranium or plutonium will kill the most people.

Mundane conversations take on significance when set in a foreign language, but lose that here. If you’ve not experienced an opera in modern English, it takes some getting used to.

The setting is Los Alamos, New Mexico, where “the gadget” was built and tested for the first time, with Act 1 about a month before completion and Act 2 the night before and the countdown to the first test at Trinity. Groves, the titular military head of the Manhattan Project, and with fellow physicist and future father of the H-Bomb, Edward Teller.ĭoctor Atomic, which finishes a run at the Metropolitan Opera in New York Thursday (November 13) and will have another staging at the English National Opera in London, is produced by John Adams ( Nixon in China) and stars Gerald Finley as Oppenheimer, Richard Paul Fink as Edward Teller, Eric Owens as General Groves, and Sasha Cooke as Oppenheimer’s long-suffering wife Kitty. Robert Oppenheimer and his disparate struggles: with nature to reveal her secrets, with his conscious to ease his guilt. But to my knowledge, none have had an opera produced in their likeness.Įnter Doctor Atomic, a look at the meaning behind the making of the atomic bomb from the perspective of its paterfamilias J. Biographies, documentaries, films, and even plays have attempted to capture the essence of these giants (see QED, for example, the play starring Alan Alda as Feynman). There are certain characters in science who stand out for their larger-than-science characteristics: Galileo and his conflicts with Papal authorities Albert Einstein and his political dabblings and pacifist overtures Richard Feynman and his safecracking, storytelling antics Stephen Hawking and his ethereal brain trapped in a frozen body. Today we present a review by Skeptic columnist Michael Shermer. Robert Oppenheimer and the development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. Editor's Note: Last month, we published a review and slide show of Doctor Atomic, the opera about J.

Batter my heart from doctor atomic oppenheimer