Dr. Atomic

I love the composer John Adams, and got some $30 senior citizen tickets (orchestra, Row O, slightly, but only slightly, off center) to see it in its new production at the Metropolitan Opera.

I didn't know what I thought, but slept on Dr. Atomic, and here's what I think.

There was no insight into Oppenheimer's suffering, or his marriage, or his brilliance, or his accomplishments. When one of the characters, a general, talked about Oppenheimer possibly having a nervous breakdown and being highstrung, I wondered what that was founded on. He seemed, throughout the opera, under pressure, but who wouldn't be?

His wife seemed a perceptive, brilliant woman, who was trying her best to support him, but I saw little of their relationship.

Even the Indians were wooden. The Manhattan Project invaded their beloved homeland, and they could do little to stop it. There is such pathos in their conflicts and their loss, and they it was all surface mining, no profundity in showing their pain.

I guess the problem, for me, was the libretto. It seemed a tour de force of Sellars's ego, having little to do with the story. If you're going to quote beautiful language, it has to have something a propos to say.

The most beautiful string of language, for me, was the amazingly rich and long poetry about hair. (The language mentioned "black hair" and the woman who was sitting on the bed, letting him run his fingers through her hair, had red hair, so I wondered what was going on there). He seemed not to be saying this to her, but to be quoting it for himself. He was obviously not saying it to seduce her, or blowing off some crazy-making steam through uncontrollable passion, because after he quoted the piece, he put on his coat and went back to work. Since the audience had no idea where most of the quotes came from, it was like looking at the pieces of a great work of art strewn on the floor and trying to put them together into one coherent piece.

The ending was too long and drawn out, of course. One did not have enough empathy for the characters to share in the suspense. If it had been truly five minutes (first siren), then two minutes (second siren) long, it would have been more effective. God knows how long it actually was, it seemed forever. I love the fact that when the bomb went off there was no reaction from the group watching it through dark glasses, no celebration of the success of something they had poured their lives into for months.

When the Japanese woman's voice entered the theatre at the very end, asking for water, I was stunned.

What was that stupid sheet strung up in back? I suppose it was the mountains, but then why did they move as the long ending played out. Was it the idea that the "earth moved?" It's all just too precious, and depends too much on the audience for interpretation.

The intellectual demands were so high that the emotional reaction was completely suffocated. Some people are so busy making a point that they forget that the point of all points is that people have to live with them. That's what was missing.