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Batter my heart doctor atomic9/22/2023 ![]() ![]() On January 17, 2009, the Met production of the opera was heard on NPR as part of the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. The HD video of the production was later televised nationally on PBS as well, in the Great Performances at the Met series. The assistant conductor for this production was also Donato Cabrera. Adams and Sellars made "some significant changes" to the opera and production in response to feedback from the San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Chicago productions.Ī new production of the opera, directed by the film director Penny Woolcock and conducted by Alan Gilbert, was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in October 2008 and was part of the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD series on November 8, 2008. ![]() It then opened in December 2007 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, again directed by Sellars, with Finley and Owens reprising their roles. In June 2007 this production made its European première at De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam. ![]() The text comes from a traditional Tewa song, and subsequent reiterations repeat the text with the direction changed to west, east, and south: Subsequent productions This act is peppered with a repeated refrain from Pasqualita, the Oppenheimers' Tewa Indian housemaid. Other borrowed texts include poetry by Charles Baudelaire and Muriel Rukeyser, the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, quotes from the Bhagavad Gita, and a traditional Tewa Indian song. government documents and communications among the scientists, government officials, and military personnel who were involved in the project. Much of the text from the opera was adapted from declassified U.S. Sellars adapted the libretto from primary historical sources.ĭoctor Atomic is similar in style to previous Adams operas Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, both of which explored the characters and personalities that were involved in historical incidents, rather than a re-enactment of the events themselves. The work centers on key players in the Manhattan Project, especially Robert Oppenheimer, General Leslie Groves, and also features Kitty Oppenheimer, Robert's wife, and her anxiety over her husband's project. Alice Goodman worked for two years with Adams on the project before leaving, objecting to the characterization of Edward Teller, as dictated by the original commission. Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," be fashioned as a 20th-century Doctor Faustus, Adams and Sellars deliberately attempted to avoid this characterization. Although the original commission for the opera suggested that U.S. The opera ends in the final, prolonged moment before the bomb is detonated. During the second act, time frequently slows down for the characters and then snaps back into reality. 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 J(the day of the test). ![]()
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