Theater Koblenz – Doctor Atomic
John Adams
The opera Doctor Atomic, premiered in 2005 at the San Francisco Opera, looks at the last days before the test detonation of the first atomic bomb. The physicists and engineers around Robert Oppenheimer live with their families in isolation in the New Mexico desert and live through a highly ambivalent situation. They are the elite of American weapons research, blessed with endless resources, driven by the impression of the German seizure of power and seduced by the incredible power that nuclear physics opens up to them. At the same time, the use of the atomic bomb with its horrific effect in Japan loomed on the horizon, which then took place only a few weeks later.
John Adam's composition specifies the amplification of the singers with microphones. This provided the opportunity to stage parts of the opera with live video. The flat of the Oppenheimer family was realised as a studio off-stage, creating a sophisticated and disturbing interplay between the different narrative levels. The atomic test site, the realm of the scientists, meets the private life of the Oppenheimers, which was marked by boredom, frustration, parties and high alcohol consumption.
The opera ends with the, also musically, fulminant detonation of the first atomic bomb.
.] An everyday scene from Japan of those days appears on the transparent screen: young and old people, mothers with children, cheerful teenagers who have no idea how close they are to cruel nuclear death. One of many building blocks of a harrowing, powerful theatre experience.
Rhein-Zeitung
