Read what our audiences have to say about Doctor Atomic
Review from Melanie Sanders
I have to say, Dr Atomic was one of the most amazing pieces of theatre I have ever seen. I was totally blown away (excuse the pun); my heart was racing by the end and I could barely breath!
The singing was fantastic, but it was just one of the elements which made the entire piece so affecting and successful. The set and design was stunning, incredibly clever but not in a 'clever-clever' way (if that makes sense), the conflicting characters were so well portrayed and clearly differentiated. The orchestral music and electronics were overwhelming at times, and incredibly beautiful at others (Oppenheimer's aria at the end of the Act I gave me tears). The piece really put across the hideousness of what the bomb would do, and the refusal or inability of those working on it to see past their goal of making the 'gadget' work, and to what a success would actually mean - the complete obliteration of hundreds of thousands of people.
I'm so pleased I'm going to see it again - one viewing just isn't enough!
Review from Dr Peter Schofield
By all reckoning, the Manhattan project and the events leading to the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945 has all the qualities to qualify it to become a myth for our time. Like most myths, our impressions of the story today are a mixture of fact and fiction, elevating the personalities involved to the status of flawed heroes and conjecturing on their characters and motivations where these are not recorded. It is a major step in this mythologising process for the events to form the subject of an opera, just as the Greek dramatists interpreted the myths of their age. It should be said at the start that Dr Atomic, the opera, premiered in San Francisco in 2005 by John Adams with a libretto 'based on original sources' by controversial director Peter Sellars, is a worthy contribution to the genre. As such it should be judged as an operatic setting of myth not as historical reality, though our response to it must be clouded by our closeness to the science, the politics and the personalities concerned. As ever I tried to approach it with an open mind.
The plot concerns the events surrounding the first test explosion of the atomic bomb, named 'Trinity' by the charismatic head of the project J Robert Oppenheimer, not only a brilliant scientist and leader, but a highly cultured individual with a well-documented tendency to quote the likes of Beaudelaire, John Donne and the Bhagavad Gita. This dichotomy divides the opera, contrasting the public scenes displaying the nervous tension leading to the explosion with more intimate scenes reminding of everyday marital life and that of the surrounding Indian community and personal exchanges between leading members of the project.
The opening two scenes, while attention holding, were not auspicious but served the purpose of setting the scene and introducing the protagonists. Set against a background of forty-two cubicles in three tiers occupied by scientists, technicians, secretaries beavering away, were the main characters. These included Edward Teller (who was later to become Oppenheimer's nemesis over the hydrogen bomb), physicist Robert Wilson (rather weakly drawn), General Groves (Army Commander of the project). Identity photos of many others involved were displayed The scientific, political, moral controversies of the project were reviewed but in a rather stilted fashion, probably because the libretto reproduces verbatim accounts of the arguments with consequential name-dropping. (Sellars is no Wagner when it comes to scene-setting). The second is a bedroom scene where Oppenheimer comes over as a chain-smoking, Beaudelaire-quoting hair-fetishist and wife, Kitty, sexually frustrated (not entirely historically correct though didn't we all tend to smoke in the bedroom in those pre-Doll days?) After this the tension mounted inexorably as the detonation approached, delayed by thunderstorms graphically depicted on-stage and in the music. The scene was dominated by an ominous model of the device. Signs of the nervous tension emerged - the paranoid bullying of the meteorologist by Groves, the fear that, despite reassurance from the calculations, the explosion could get out of hand, agitation at the consequences of success, taking bets on the TNT-equivalent yield. Interspersed were mystical musings by Oppenheimer, the concerns of Kitty and her maid Pasqualita about the child, visions of death of the Tewa Indians. The opera ends with the suspense of a prolonged two minute count down to portentous rumbling filling the theatre and culminates in a flash forward to the voice of a Japanese woman pleading for water for her children. This was dramatically effective but a flash followed by the sound would have been more realistically chilling.
Adam's music is best described as 'post-minimalist'. Instead of the slowly evolving pulsations of pure minimalism, as in the composer's Nixon in China, this was a more eclectic style reverting This co-production with the New York Metropolitan (which could have been seen 'Live in HD' in Oxford) was superb. It was directed with sure touch by film-maker Penny Woolcock, thankfully avoiding cinematic technique. The conductor was Lawrence Renes. The singing and acting were inspired, all the characters comfortable in their roles. Leading them was Gerald Finley, in the title role adding to his many recent successes in post-Wagnerian operas including The Minotaur and Die Tote Stadt. But almost equally impressive were Sasha Cook as Kitty, Meredith Arwady as Pasqualita (especially moving in her Act II Lullaby) and the men, Brindley Sherratt (Teller), Jonathan Veira (General Groves) and Roderick Earle as the bullied meteorologist.
Dr Atomic is a substantial and serious opera which could well find its way into the repertoire. It forces one to ponder again on the justification for dropping the Bomb without warning on a populated region of a nearly defeated enemy and on the motivations and achievement of those who worked on it. Images of Hiroshima continue to contribute to the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons even after six decades.
Review by Dr Jane Susanna Ennis
I consider myself very fortunate to have been present at the UK premiere of this work by John Adams. Before the opera starts, the scrim in front of the stage shows the Periodic Table, from which four elements are missing. These are the ones that were used to create the atomic bomb. (The person sitting next to me tried to explain which they were, but he had forgotten!! Plutonium was one, obviously..............)
Then as the opera begins, the stage is occupied by stacked cubicles in which the secretaries and military personnel are sitting, while in front of the stage Edward Teller reads out a letter from Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard asking him to circulate a petition against dropping the bomb on Japan. Oppenheimer responds to this by arguing that scientists should stay out of politics - while the audience is left to reflect that by getting involved in the Manhattan project in the first place, the scientists were getting very deeply involved in politics. This is obviously one of the questions Adams (and Peter Sellars, the librettist and the original producer) want the audience to consider - what is the responsibility of scientists? The scene is thus set, musically and dramatically. The text in this scene consists of continuous recitative, which blends well with the music, at times almost approaching the Wagnerian ideal of symphonisches Gewebe.
Adams is also fortunate this time in not being hampered by an embarrassingly bad libretto; the text is based on documents from the Manhattan project and other contemporary records, interspersed with quotes from Baudelaire, Bhagavad Gita and, as probably everyone already knows, a sonnet by John Donne - of which more in due course. The second scene takes place in the Oppenheimers' bedroom - Kitty sings a lyrical, plangent lament about love and loneliness, with the repeated question "Am I in your light?"and tries to seduce her husband, who sits on the bed, reading and chain-smoking. Then he starts to respond by quoting Baudelaire's poem La chevelure, in which the poet wants to lose himself in the dark tresses of his beloved, the perfumes of which implies the mysteries of far-off, exotic coasts - set by Adams to a beautiful lyric melody. But in the end she is left alone, as he returns to his work..... In short, the music oscillates between passages of lyricism and the minimalism which has been Adams' trade-mark for so long.
Scene 3 takes place on 15 July 1945, the night before the test. There is a fierce storm, and the meteorologist reminds General Groves that these storms had been predicted several months previously. The General.....blames the meteorologist!! And says he will imprison or even hang him if the weather does not improve. We are assured this is based on historical records, but this sounds more like the behaviour of a crazed Roman emperor or barbarian war-lord; he will kill the sorcerers if they don't predict a good outcome of the battle! It is the end of this scene that Oppenheimer recites the Donne sonnet "batter my heart, three-personed God". Oppenheimer was a great enthusiast for Donne and Baudelaire, and obviously Adams and Sellars wanted to weave this into the drama. This is Holy Sonnet XIV, and it was this which inspired Oppenheimer to name the New Mexico test site 'Trinity'. But possibly in the context of the atomic bomb project, the lines "yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain/But am betrothed unto your enemy" has a Faustian reference - not of interest to Donne, of course, but Adams specifically conceived of Oppenheimer as a Faustian figure (the title is a reference to Thomas Mann's DOKTOR FAUSTUS), and the idea of being 'betrothed' to Satan may imply the idea of a Faustian pact.
Act II opens with a scene for Kitty, her Native American maid, and her baby. (Apparently Native Americans from the local area were recruited to work as maids/servants/cooks for the personnel at the base). It is the maid, Pasquita, who finally soothes the baby singing a Native American melody; there is obviously an attempt to balance what is seen as the Native American respect for Nature with the attempt of the American military to wrench her last secrets from her, at whatever cost (even to themselves). The rest of the act consists of the build-up towards the test - the bomb (known up till this time as the Gadget) is seen hanging from the roof, an enormous silver sphere. Just before the detonation, the chorus sing an excerpt from the Bhagavad Gita, (in the translation by Christopher Isherwood) which expresses fear of the dreadful forces that are about to be unleashed: At the sight of this, your Shape stupendous, Full of mouths and eyes, feet, thighs and bellies, Terrible with fangs, o Master, All the worlds are fear-struck, even just as I am.
As the tension mounts in the final moments, so do the off-stage sound effects, until the rumbling, earthquake-like sound almost, but not quite, drowns out the orchestra, who play a few bleak chords on the strings. Before this point, some very Fafner-like motifs could be heard coiling round the lower reaches of the orchestra. And the noise continues to increase in volume until some members of the audience were covering their ears, and the light - "brighter than a thousand suns" - started to cover the stage. The work ends with the sound of a Japanese woman begging for water. An ideal cast had been assembled for this premiere - Gerald Finley ideal as the tormented genius Oppenheimer; he was in fact the singer who created the role at the Metropolitan Opera. I have singled him out since he is the main character (not 'hero', I think!) but the entire cast was superb, evidently they loved this work and gave their all. I was particular happy to discover that Adams was actually present; he came on to the stage at the end, and was greeted with well-deserved thunderous applause.
Review by Silverfin
So there I sat as the theatre filled up, in a decidedly unappreciative frame of mind thanks to a middle-ear infection - ibuprofen'd to the eyeballs, deaf on one side apart from a constant whistling noise, and distracting myself by trying to work out which elements were missing from the large periodic table which was printed on the stage scrim. And there 3 hours later, enthusiastically applauding performers, production team and composer for an evening which I enjoyed a great deal, despite myself.
The opera opens with two large sets of stacked cubicles, each one containing a chorus member, seat, bit of blackboard and a screen which could be pulled down over the front of the cubicle and have stuff projected onto it. This device was used many times throughout the production and was visually effective in conveying all the different 'normal' people each working on their own little bit of research for the Manhattan project, coming together only later as the bomb took shape. I do like the multimedia experience of using projection screens on stage, although in this case the images used were mostly monochrome and pretty literal - scientists' ID cards, maps of Japan, rainstorms, etc. There wasn't much to the rest of the set - a desk for Teller, a bed for Kitty Oppenheimer to languish on, and some scaffolding for the bomb tower - but one's attention was all on the characters singing, anyway.
Adams was never my favourite minimalist, but I have always found his music listenable. I'm not familiar with most of his more recent work, so was interested to hear this one. It surprised me by the number of different styles that were mixed up together - rich Wagnerian textures here, jazzy Sondheim-esque stabbing rhythms there, along with passages of traditional minimalist bubbling woodwind accompaniments or Shaker Loops strings. Under a less experienced composer this mixture would probably have not held together, but in this case it did. The harmony was tonal but chromatic, sometimes straying far from a sense of home key. I found it best when the vocal lines were more lyrical and sustained (although often with spiky dissonant orchestral accompaniment), compared to the staccato fast-talking sections.
The libretto didn't do an awful lot for me, but lyrics rarely do. The tension of the scientific and political context was quite dramatic enough by itself, but those who can't bear a romance-free story will be glad to hear there was the 'subplot' of the Oppenheimers' marriage, which actually did not feel shoehorned in at all.
Of the performers, Gerald Finley (Oppenheimer), Brindley Sherratt (Teller) stood out as excellent. Finley is becoming one of my favourite singers, and was a charisma machine in complete command of his role, showing a three-dimensional character conflicted about his success in developing a world-changing engine of destruction. 'Batter my heart' was probably the highlight of the evening. Sherratt, an old favourite of mine, sang his part very well, although he didn't get as much to do as I would have liked. He injected Teller with a fantastic deadpan black humour.
I also particularly enjoyed Sasha Cooke's Kitty Oppenheimer. Her voice was lovely, with a tone well-balanced between clarity and richness, and the flexibility to comfortably slur jumps of over an octave as if they were a semitone. 'Am I in your light?' was another highlight of the evening. Meredith Arwady (as Pasqualita, the Oppenheimer's Tewa Indian maid, complete with buckskin outfit and pigtails) hit some amazing resonant low notes, but was less convincing when switching to higher-pitches passages - although this may well be the fault of the writing rather than her voice.
The orchestra sounded good, although not knowing the music I can't comment on accuracy. The piccolo was featured quite a lot, and was played very well (Regular readers will know that I always notice what the piccolo is doing!), and other stand-outs were the principal horn, Eb clarinet and low brass. The sparing use of electronic sound blended well into the overall soundscape, and the only bit that jarred for me was the tacked-on recording at the end of a woman (presumably future bomb victim) speaking in Japanese.
As for once I'm writing this right at the start of the run, I can advise any waverers that Dr Atomic is definitely worth an evening of your time!
Review by Clive Walker
I saw Dr Atomic at the Dress on Monday and was not at all disappointed. Such a contrast with La Boheme but enjoyable all the same. The highly technical staging was superb with the two large 'window' panels fronting the mountain range upstage worked really well - I can imagine the problems you must have had with the projection - it worked for me. A difficult subject to present in this art form, I felt that the challenges faced by the scientists and the military as they tried to balance the demands of international politics at Potsdam with the weather back home came over well with a nice balance of urgency, moral debate and comedy.
As seems to be the norm now, the voices were pin sharp and the sur-titles almost superfluous. I hope that the response at the end of the rest of the performances mirrors Monday nights - the pause before the applause was the longest I've experienced and all for the right reasons. Well done ENO.
Review by Mike Hollingsworth
The last time I posted a review here was to give the thumbs down to the production of Carmen. I am delighted to say that after seeing Dr Atomic on Friday 20 March 2009 I have something much more positive to report. I thought this production was excellent. The setting was wonderful; John Adams' music was great and the performances were all good. The opera conveyed wonderfully the tension of gathering together a bunch of clever scientists and locking them away in the middle of nowhere to work on a project the outcome of which, they had only calculated. Would it fizzle out or set fire to the atmosphere? They did not know. Gerald Finley was a suitably tortured Oppenheimer and Batter My Heart ranked as a most memorable dramatic moment in opera. The end was extremely scary. Having seen Il Travatore and La Sonnambula at the Met exactly a week before, this production compared well with that experience. Let's have more productions of this quality from the ENO.
Review by David and Jean Batterbee
This was our second new production of the season (La Boheme) and another great night at the opera. John Adam's Doctor Atomic adds greatly to his stature as the foremost operatic composer of our times, but will do as much for the relevance and potency of contemporary opera itself. Adams's chronicling of America's 20th Century impact on the World through Nixon In China and Klinghoffer is bringing a new landscape into the opera house. The subject matter, the text of the story grounds the opera in our world, but the language and the musical palette is the essence of true opera. Huge issues and the business of the World are shared with the intimate. Doctor Atomic, not surprisingly has some big moments, and some big sounds, but it is in the moments of intimacy and private doubt that it radiates genius.
The second scene of the First Act between Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty and the last scene where Oppenheimer seems to realise the enormity of what he has done, and for the first time his fears, are wonderful. This is without doubt the most beautiful and achingly lyrical new music we have yet heard. Klinghoffer had some writing that hinted at what Adams was capable of. But here in this work we find a sustained passage of duet singing to rival anything in music. It was beautiful, it was grown up, it was sexy, it was sad and it worked magically.
The closing aria on John Donne's 'Batter my heart' in many ways could have been an effective close to the whole opera, so well did it stop the heart and the sense of "we can so we will" gung-ho of what went before. These two passages alone are worth the ticket price. As big a success as this deserves to be for Adams so should it be for Gerald Finley. He is a fine actor but he is a magnificent singer. The part is perfect for him, but he adds enormously to its depth and complexity. The voice is beautiful it is powerful and has a clarity of diction that astonishes. If Finley was outstanding it was the more remarkable as the whole cast were as good as it gets. Thank you John Adams. Thank you Gerald Finley. Thank you E.N.O.
Review by Michael
I seem to be very unlucky at ENO, first superb music ruined by the production (Partenope), and now a superb production (Doctor Atomic) but really no music at all.
This is an opera for people who are interested in " issues" but not very interested in music. There are inoffensive chugging chords, acres of recitative, occasional arioso in the style of Samuel Barber's Dover Beach of 1936, but without Barber's gift for melody. The hit aria, setting John Donne is merely portentious. Its all very simple and very very dull.
Singing was first class, for once surtitles not needed every word came over. Production was clever and did what it could about the fact there is next to no interaction between the characters. You could cut out Mrs Oppenheim and her maid without noticing they had gone. The poor Indian maid has quite the the most boring music of the lot, the same phrase over and over.
The set is like a period drama, every costume accurately said "USA 1945". Strange that the composers directions are ignored in almost every other production and in this one everything was hyper accurate in every respect.
The final let down was the end, and we have known for 3 hours what the climax has to be. 10 minutes before the end someone sings 2 minutes to blast, the music after a lot of stage business of late comers rushing in and goggle putting on,fades away to ticking and electronic noise, nothing happens for ages, and we end eventually with spoken words of the victims. Spoken word the final refuge of the composer with nothing to say musically
Of course music cannot depict God (but the begining of Moses and Aron is not a bad effort) or an atomic blast, or the enormity of suffering the blast brought but its pretty good at compassion try Wozzeck. Adams just relies on a stage effect
A great shame as there has been very few if any attempts in Opera to deal with the moral questions raised by science. This one does not even ask the question
Review from Eirini Koutroulis
Music was absolutely dreadful...when one can't remember a single melody from the opera then I would call that a failure.The words were not clear so reading the subtitles was necessary at all times(I'm not sure this happens in Italy with their Italian Operas)So with splatters of sound and oddly spoken words I don't know what to call the show. The words used were not good enough to even recite in a play(poor poetry at times) however interesting the topic was. I did think that the set was amazing however and the singers seemed really good. How they remember their cues I have no idea... it is seems like a game the maestro has devised.
Review from Martin Ridley
I was excited at seeing Dr Atomic especially as the tickets were £10 each for wonderful seats.This was however the highlight of the opera for me as i was only able to endure the first act. This was over an hour long but could easily have been condensed into half that if the irrelevant areas were eliminated. One example was the bedroom scene, having said that this was perhaps the only melodic part of the act.The music whilst well played sounded as if the orchestra got together and played what each individual felt like. Whilst i feel it is important to commission new operas the standard must be better than this. Dr Atomic will not find its way onto any list of operas to see before you die.
Review by Robin I Morgan
John Adams makes Grand Opera out of contemporary political events, and gets away with it, even without having betrayed heroines flinging themselves off battlements. We have seen, and were impressed with, Nixon in China, but have so far not seen The Death of Klinghoffer. This one, taking its cue from compacts with the Devil (ie Doktor Faustus), examines the dilemmas faced by the soldiers and scientists in the period leading up to the Trinity atom bomb test in the Alamagordo Desert, the other side of Albuquerque from Los Alamos (a distinction people often forget) on 16 July 1945. The scientists range from the thoughtful , teller, to the gung-ho, sexually active, young ones taking bets on the outcome of the test (from a fizzle to global incineration), while the soldiers suffer from cat herding syndrome trying to deliver on the political agenda. Around these, local Tewa Indians, employed on menial tasks, go about their business.
The opera starts at Los Alamos, where the scientists argue about demonstrating the bomb to the Japanese; it then moves to Oppenheimer's house where his absorption with his work leaves his wife, Kitty, out in the cold. The final scene of the first act is set at the test site where tension rise as the weather becomes unfavourable and pressure from Truman at the Potsdam conference increases. General Groves threatens to hang his meteorologist if the weather doesn't improve, and Oppenheimer recites Donne. The second act starts with Kitty drinking, and the Tewa maid singing a lullaby to the baby. Meanwhile the weather worsens, as the bomb (known as the "gadget") is prepared. There is general consternation when Oppenheimer finalises the time of the test: everyone examines their own emotions and the Indians perform sacred rituals. Finally, with Oppenheimer reciting Baudelaire, the gadget is fired, and as the opera closes a Japanese woman is heard crying for water.
The staging for all this was very inventive: the opening scene being a backdrop of pigeon holes containing dozens of scientists doing calculations, but in an image of their identity photographs. On the stage, the lead scientists argue. The backdrop variously appears and recedes at different points in the story, but the most chilling moment is when the gadget, a life-size replica, wires and all, descends from the flies and the scientists work on it, somewhat warily given the raging electrical storm. The characters were dressed like their originals; very effectively in the case of Teller (Brindley Sherratt), Groves (Jonathan Veira, whom we have been following since Wexford), and Oppenheiemer and hat (James Cleverton standing in for the indisposed Gerald Finlay). Sasha Cooke (mezzo) was an extremely attractive Kitty - she also sings Iolanthe), and Roderick Earle, another ENO regular, as the meteorologist.
As is usual with Adams, the music is different but very approachable, and with some brilliant effects to point up the philosophical as well as scientific issues they were all facing. Nevertheless, it was a long opera and did get somewhat soggy at times: one wished the characters would get on with things rather than reflect on the Bhagavad Vita. One felt that at least the Indians were doing their rituals in real time. The music for Kitty and Oppenheimer and for the maid was particularly lyrical, and that for the storm sequences appropriately stormy. Groves' threats to his meteorologist also made one feel for the latter. The ending was very cleverly done with a build up of sound, but no bang, which then faded away to the voice from Hiroshima. The orchestra was on top form. Not everyone's cup of tea, but a very powerful and thought provoking piece, very intelligently constructed, and showing that opera can still address big issues relating to the human condition. A great night for ENO.
On the issue underlying the opera, whether there should have been a demonstration for the Japanese, and whether the bomb should have been used, the opera is somewhat equivocal, though it is likely Adams felt it should not have been used. The American military line is that Japan was not defeated and there could have been up to a million US casualties in taking the mainland. Others now argue that Japan was on the verge of surrender anyway. Given the fight for Okinawa, I take the view that at the time, it was a reasonable assumption that Japan would strongly resist any invasion of their homeland, and there was no guarantee that a demonstration would have had the result required. The use of the atom bomb, as a shock weapon more than a terror weapon, therefore probably saved many more lives, American as well as Japanese, than were lost as a result of its use, even including those who died subsequently from the effects of the bombing. Another point is that conventional air raids on Japan were killing large numbers of people. If Japan was on the verge of surrender, how many people who have been killed in air raids, before Japan sued for peace? It is unlikely that Japan was really ready to surrender as early as August 1945, so a couple more months of conventional bombing would have killed substantial numbers of civilians, and destroyed even more cities. Finally, there is the argument that no-one has used nuclear weapons since 1945. Had they not been used then, there is every likelihood they would have been used in Korea, where the implications are frightening, given the state of the Cold War at the time.
The opera, unsurprisingly, makes no mention of Jumbo. Because of the cost of plutonium, a plan was devised to put the first bomb in a metal case such that if the thing did not go off properly, the plutonium would be contained in the case rather than scattered over the desert. At great expense Jumbo was constructed, and with great difficulty transported to the test site, where it wasn't used. It was left about 800 yards from the bomb and survived; it is still there.
Review by Hugh
A truly dreadful opera. The score was dull, unadventurous and repetitive. The libretto alternated between cliche and banality - at times it was excruciating. The bedroom scene with 'Kitty' and Dr Oppenheimer was risible. I have heard very many operas - mainly classical but occasionally modern - and this was without doubt the most execrable hour and a half have suffered. I don't know what happened in the second half - I left at the interval. The set for the opening scene was splendid, but that was as good as it gets. If you are thinking of booking, don't. If you are the ENO, get a life.
Review by Emily Andrews
Having seen the ENO's production of John Adams' "Nixon in China" eight years ago, and not forgotten it, I was expecting "Dr Atomic" to be another deeply memorable experience: it did not disappoint me.
The subject matter is one which is perfect for operatic portrayal, involving reasonable people making choices which lead inevitably to a terrible tragedy (in this case, the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima). The story was made even more powerful by everybody in the audience knowing the outcome: we all knew that the atomic bomb would be a "success", and would kill many, many people. The story was told dispassionately, without judgement, and I found myself identifying strongly with Oppenheimer, a geeky scientist who got caught up in the ground-breaking science his team were doing, and who only realised too late the devastating power of what he had invented. [Note the strong link with Faust, which the opera drew on heavily].
Gerald Finley was fabulous as Oppenheimer - I am looking forward to seeing him sing in the ENO's upcoming Peter Grimes. Sasha Cooke acted Kitty Oppenheimer beautifully, but her voice didn't make such a big impression on me, even in her lovely aria. Meredith Arwady, (singing Pasqualita the Tewa nanny), had a haunting deep rumble of a voice, which reminded me a little of a recording I have of Marian Anderson singing "He's got the whole world in his hands".
The chorus was wonderful, as I have come to expect from ENO productions, and the orchestra made a good job of the difficult score, although there were moments when the ensemble could have been a touch closer.
The production was visually amazing - in particular I have two lasting images: the scene with all the scientists who were working on the bomb in various poses of disarray in their square boxes; and Oppenheimer cowering alone on stage under the shadow of the atomic bomb pressing down on him, during his Donne aria.
In fact, this Donne aria was the highlight of the opera for me., coming just before the interval. The aria takes its words from the John Donne sonnet "Batter my heart", and expresses the conflicting emotions felt by Oppenheimer about his involvement in the bomb's creation. Everything came together here - Donne's powerful words, the mesmerising music, and the awesome visual impact of the scene, as mentioned above. This was quite possibly the best single opera moment I have had in my life.
Also worth special mention was Pasqualita's song, which started as a gentle lullaby about clouds coming over a mountain and rain coming down, but morphed subtly as the tension mounted into a threatening portent of doom: the innocent weather cloud was now the atomic bomb's cloud; the rain, deadly.
Dr Atomic has been criticised for its clunky, un-poetic lyrics, (such as "How do you feel?", "Well, pretty excited"), but for the most part, I found the words appropriate to the opera - after all, these are scientists, not bohemian artistes as in La Boheme, or monarchs and gods as in many traditional operas such as Julius Caesar, or Aida. Their language would be straightforward.
However, the love scene between Oppenheimer and his wife was un-convincing and this could well have been due to the very odd choice of lyrics, such as "only my eyes, splitting the skull to tickle your brain with love", and "If you could know all that I see, all that I feel, all that I hear in your hair" [sung from between kitty's legs]. Perhaps we should infer that gods and bohemians are better lovers than scientists, as well as speakers?!
Despite this one weird love scene, this was opera at its best: if anybody dares tell you that opera isn't exciting, and/or isn't relevant to the modern-day world, send them to this one! It is everything an opera should be - deeply-relevant, thought-provoking, musically and visually wonderful, and incredibly exciting, particularly the final act. Well done ENO!
