Doctor Atomic

Synopsis

Doctor Atomic focuses on the moral dilemma surrounding J. Robert Oppeheimer’s apocalyptic invention.

Our Review:

26 February 2009

The opera, which has done the intercontinental rounds since 2005, is set on the eve of the first nuclear test in 1945, in a world on the tipping-point of no-return. J Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist at the head of the team who split the atom, hangs in a literal storm of anticipation for a venture whose consequences are very far from certain.

Doctor Atomic is tauter and more focused than John Adams’ Nixon in China, without the earlier work’s surrealistic sallies. Seen at the Coliseum in 2000 and 2006, Nixon balanced the domestic and political/historical and the new opera seeks to do the same.

The bedroom episodes, which glimpse into the personal turmoil forced on Oppenheimer and his wife by his epoch-making work, are less successful dramatically than the strained work scenes. They are lyrical, with some nice Debussyan meandering in Kitty O’s poetically fanciful flights, but are over-long and lacking in the tension that pu...

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Latest User Review

Suttox - 30 March 2009:

FAR to long, and some of the staging was odd, but easily one of Adams best operas. He really gets under the skin of the subject and the music makes you (well.. made me) feel physiologicaly sick....

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