![]() The libretto mixed direct quotations of Manhattan Project figures-as recorded in letters, declassified documents, and memoirs-with passages from various other texts, including the Bhagavad Gita, a Tewa Pueblo lullaby, and poetry by the likes of John Donne, Charles Baudelaire, and Muriel Rukeyser. Rather than writing original material, Sellars made the unconventional decision to assemble a libretto from a variety of sources. However, she ultimately decided to leave the project, so Peter Sellars stepped in. He agreed to go forward with the project.Īlice Goodman, librettist for Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, was slated to collaborate again with Adams on Doctor Atomic. He said at an Atomic Heritage Foundation symposium in 2006 that Faust seemed “very much a German or European myth, and that we Americans, we really have our own separate mythology.” Despite his lack of enthusiasm for the Faust aspect, Adams did see the dramatic potential in the atomic bomb, which he characterized as the “ultimate American myth” in its own right. Initially, Adams was lukewarm to the idea. In 1999, Pamela Rosenberg, then-director of the San Francisco Opera, approached Adams in the hopes of commissioning an “American Faust” focusing on Oppenheimer and the Los Alamos story. Wilson, and Kitty Oppenheimer, are also represented. Other historical figures involved in the Manhattan Project, including General Leslie Groves, Edward Teller, Robert R. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, is the central character of the opera. ![]() The opera, which premiered in 2005, takes place in the weeks leading up to the Trinity Test, the first-ever detonation of a nuclear weapon. J. ![]() Doctor Atomic is an opera composed by John Adams with a libretto by Peter Sellars.
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