I'm still in a daze from last night's Doctor Atomic performance at the Met. A few initial thoughts: Oppenheimer's closing aria for Act I, "Batter My Heart," is beyond beautiful; I'd see the opera over and over again just to hear Finley sing it. Alan Gilbert was working very hard, and got some extraordinary results from the string section, from their many moments of sul ponticello, clutched-up fear to the lower strings' luminous, dark-throated beauty in the Oppenheimers' Act I duet. (The brass weren't quite as on point, unfortunately.) Richard Paul Fink played the combative Edward Teller with great insight.
John Adams' score is a wonder, but unfortunately there are still sections that do not sustain the opera's intensity and emotional punch, including Kitty Oppenheimer's raptures.
MMFCC remarked, quite correctly, that the audience seemed to include a fair number of opera virgins: not necessarily the 18-to-34 demographic, but people in their thirties and forties who had clearly never walked into that venue before. That's a very good thing.
The end of the opera, with Japanese bomb victims politely requesting water and assistance, is absolutely harrowing.
A few elements of the new Penny Woolcock production are puzzling/slightly irritating, including the Tewa lullaby that the maid Pasqualita sings to a now completely absent infant; in this new staging, she sings to the audience. ( I suppose, though, that we all could use a moment of soothing in the dawn of the Atomic Age.) I'm not fond of the fact that in learning about staging an opera, Woolcock decided to import some of the most cliche-ridden bits of received wisdom about how singers should move (or not) and where they should stand--I was expecting a first timer's fresh take, and instead Woolcock seemed cowed into tradition.
For comparison's sake, you can now find the original production on DVD via Opus Arte, with Sellars as the TV director. (Expect many, many close-ups in quick cuts.)
(Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)
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