Doctor Atomic

Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. 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). In 2007, a documentary was made by Jon H. Else about the creation of the opera and collaboration between Adams and Sellars, titled Wonders Are Many. Composition history 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 July 16, 1945 (the day of the test). During the second act, time is shown slowing down for the characters and then snapping back to the clock. The opera ends in the final, prolonged moment before the bomb is detonated. Although the original commission for the opera suggested that U.S. physicist J. 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. Alice Goodman worked for two years with Adams on the project before leaving. She objected to the characterization of Edward Teller, as dictated by the original commission.