On Monday, December 29, the opera will air at 9 pm on Channel 13 -WNET as part of the Great Performances series.

Act Two of Doctor Atomic careens toward apprehension and anguish while a storm rages and delays the test. It opens with Kitty Oppenheimer drinking wine while her Pueblo Indian maid sings a lullaby about preserving the earth. The bomb lurks above, behind are mountains draped in cloth. Blossoms and lightning, sings the maid in her contralto, blossoms and lightning.

Meanwhile, the scientists are terribly jittery. Teller obsesses over a possible miscalculation that could cause a larger explosion. Oppenheimer has a coughing fit. Teller talks to the press saying the blast might create enough heat to ignite the atmosphere. Oppenheimer is sure it will not, but frets about delays and wonders whether the bomb might fizzle. The meteorologist worries that if the winds change, the storm could blow radioactive debris toward the scientists’ shelter where they intend to observe the climax of their experiment. I wonder how often scientists second-guess themselves. If ever there was a moment to do so, Trinity was it. Never before has so much been in the balance. We see these scientists at their most vulnerable, their most human. The opera debunks the notion that scientists are unfeeling and will sacrifice anything for the glory of innovation and fame.

Wagnerian horns seem to herald the wrath of nature. Then a scientist recounts a recurring dream in which he is almost at the top of a tower, but missteps into a “long, slow fall.” Each time he awakens in a sweat before he would have hit the ground. Several times we are reminded that the test’s toll affects all levels of Los Alamos dwellers and personnel. The anxiety of the women is contrapuntal to the researchers’; surrounded by flashes of lightning, Kitty’s maid continues to sing to the Oppenheimers’ baby.

More questions abound between Oppenheimer and Teller, and between General Groves, concerning the effects of amounts of TNT. The chorus, seemingly trapped by their cubicles, the periodic elements themselves, writhe inside. “All the world is fear-struck, ah, ah, mercy,” the chorus intones.

Groves frets that they are eight hours behind schedule and rails that the project has been plagued by indecisiveness and uncertain loyalty. The seconds ticking on the clock seem to Oppenheimer to say, “I am life, I am life, insupportable, implausible life.” The scientists lose radio contact with the tower. No one knows whether the bomb will detonate. Says Teller, “We wait for divine revelation to tell us when it will go off.” Oppenheimer contemplates being surrounded by mystery, peace, and perfumes.
Finally there are no more minutes, no more seconds. At 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945, time disappears.

The performers gape at the audience and we gape back.

After a long pause, we hear a Japanese woman’s voice calling for water….

Silence and then, on a personal level, hearing the consequence of putting the bomb to use. There could not have been a more brilliant yet subtle ending to this wrenching work, I think.
Since writing about Act One, I have had several conversations with people less enthusiastic about this production than I. In one exchange, my companion criticized the staging and costumes. My sensibility, however, has leaned toward how the science story or how the history of science fared in this genre, the dimensionality of the characters, and the singers’ voices, which I thought were absolutely beautiful. I consider it a success.

I suggest you see Doctor Atomic, if only because scientists are so rarely portrayed with all the dimensions opera affords. And even if aspects are not to your taste, it can bring you back to the dawn of the nuclear age. So even if you don’t like what you see or hear, you will contemplate what it was like to have been on that particular edge, and your imagination will be sparked.

For information about me please visit KarenAFrenkel.com.