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. A documentary was made about the creation of the opera, titled Wonders Are Many (2007). The first act takes place abo... more

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. A documentary was made about the creation of the opera, titled Wonders Are Many (2007). 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 15, 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 Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," be fashioned as a twentieth-century Doctor Faustus, Adams and Sellars deliberately attempted to avoid this... less