24 days to the Doctor Atomic premiere!

Along with all its thrilling theatricality and musical challenges, Doctor Atomic has also presented some unexpected pleasures as we connect with members of the scientific, political, and artistic communities for their comments and insights ahead of the opera’s Met premiere on October 13. The most gregarious of the lot continue to be the Manhattan Project veterans. With the youngest member of that group now 83, they are a stately, vigorous bunch as they recall Los Alamos and relate to us their experiences there by email.

Read the rest of this entry »

25 days to the Doctor Atomic premiere!

Richard Paul Fink stalked across the makeshift staging area, a ringer for Edward Teller. Gerald Finley evoked a spindly J. Robert Oppenheimer with his porkpie hat and cigarette. Sasha Cooke lounged in a long robe and espadrilles, capturing the forever thirsty Kitty Oppenheimer as she reached for her prop martini glass. And Meredith Arwady stood among them and hit the long, languid notes of a lullaby rendered dark by knowledge of her employer’s work.

“Oh, my little one,” Arwady sang, drawing the notes out across octaves. While later in the month the singers will rehearse with the Met Orchestra, for now it was a piano that kept time and tune in the background. “Oh, oh, my little one,” she repeated. Then she doubled over.

Read the rest of this entry »

28 days to the Doctor Atomic premiere! 

Through the last week of August, the M, N and Q rows of the orchestra section at the Metropolitan Opera were covered with sturdy platforms balancing a scattering of lights, Mac laptops, books of laminated mockups. Tech specialists conferred, murmuring into phones. Everyone scribbled notes.

“We’re in Act I, scene three,” Jerad Shoner, a technical assistant, explained in a low whisper. “So we’re somewhere in the desert outside Los Alamos right now.”

The Met was in its technical rehearsals for Doctor Atomic, John Adams’s opera about the making of the first atomic bomb that will have its company premiere in October.

The hall filled with all the bleeps and burps of mid-century technology. Side screens flashed with alternating projections of declassified government documents. An original diagram of the bomb appeared above everyone’s heads. Chalky rain streamed down invisible panes. One of the stand-ins, on stage all day to mark lighting cues, shuffled her feet.

“We have a bomb,” set designer Julian Crouch said.

Read the rest of this entry »