Alice Goodman worked for two years with Adams on the project before leaving. Robert Oppenheimer, the 'father of the atomic bomb', be fashioned as a 20th-century Doctor Faustus, Adams and Sellars deliberately worked to avoid this characterization. The opera ends in the final, prolonged moment before the bomb is detonated.Īlthough the original commission for the opera suggested that U.S. During the second act, time is shown slowing down for the characters and then snapping back to the clock. 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).

Else about the creation of the opera and collaboration between Adams and Sellars, titled Wonders Are Many.

In 2007, a documentary was made by Jon H. The work focuses on how leading figures at Los Alamos dealt with the great stress and anxiety of preparing for the test of the first atomic bomb (the ' Trinity' test). It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005.

Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars.

Doctor atomic batter my heart lyrics