THE OPERA DR ATOMIC AT THE NY MET

Comments on the Opera, Dr Atomic, a work by John Adams (libretto by Peter Sellars) performed at the New York Metropolitan Opera, October 30, 2008. Penny Woolcock directed.

The opera centers on the work and life of J(Julius) Robert Oppenheimer a prominent physicist and his wife Kitty during the period when he was in charge of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The site, a desolate desert valley known to the early Spanish as Jornada del Muerto (Journey of the Dead Man). The time is a few weeks before the testing of the first atomic bomb. The Met playbill states that John Adams took up the task of creating a modern opera around the Dr Faustus myth. Adams confesses that when he was approached to do the project J Robert Oppenheimer popped into his mind as the protagonist. Vibhuti Patel, (Time Magazine, Vibhuti Patel, Oct 15, 2008) states that Oppenehimer was the leader of a team of scientists who in "pursuit of the ultimate knowledge, essentially made an infernal compact with the US government and its military to deliver the world's most powerful WMD." The opera's music is not the atonal, discordant modern music I expected, but is complex and dark. The score includes the sounds of running motors, moving vehicles, industrial sounds, 1940s pop music, and at the stunning end--the plaintive voices of Japanese victims of the bombings over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Oppenheimer character's major aria is based on a line from John Dunne's sonnet: "Batter my heart, three person'd God." It was my personal favorite of the production. Overall, the work is not one in which a patron would be found leaving the opera house humming his or her favorite tune. It is a serious thought provoking work. The libretto by Sellars is powerful statement concerning the two-weeks leading up to the emergence of the world into the atomic era in July 1945, and of the ethical dilemma facing those who offered their technical skills to their government and the military in their belief that they were in a race with the Nazis for the doomsday weapon. Too late, once Germany had been defeated, they realize that their efforts and discoveries were to be used against humanity in a horrible new way.

(Recent discoveries have proved that General Grove was all along aware that there was no real program in Nazi Germany for a nuclear bomb. The weapon was sought by the administration and the military as a way to buffalo Russia who was seen as the major threat to the US plans.)

The main characters are Robert Oppenheimer, Kitty his wife, General Leslie Grove the military commander at Los Alamos, Edward Teller a physicist and Robert Wilson, a young scientist whose qualms of conscience concerning the planned bombing of Japanese population centers leads to him attempting to circulate a letter of explanation to President Truman . The voices of the performers were uniformly appropriate and powerful.

I wondered at the beginning about the question of whether this was a worthy subject for an opera..thinking perhaps the material could be better explored as a play...but at the end, it was clear that the opera was the best vehicle. Since Dr Atomic is not a factual retelling of an historical event or even an investigation into the ethical and emotional aspects of the characters..but as Pamela Rosenberg stated at a talk at the Berkeley Public Library (September 29th 2005) but an "acute" treatment of subject that goes to the emotional spaces." The opera With its powerful viusal impact, its use of music, sounds and the human voice as a component of the overall emotional statement which still reverberates in my head, this opera worked. It clearly connected with the New York audience emotionally charged by tragic events of a terrorist attack (the tragedy of 9-11 occurred only a short distance away), as well as the disgust with the horrible, wasteful wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan and the emotional turmoil of the on-going Wall Street meltdown (again happening within a very short distance of the opera house) all seemed to reverberate in emotional unison with the walls of the Met in the last act, as the bomb was dropped on the Trinity site with ear-splitting and chest-vibrating sounds.

"Opera has a curious ability to handle life's biggest themes as no other art form can." stated, John Adams (http://www.newsweek.com/id/164067) and that is a statement with which one can fully agree after seeing Dr Atomic.

An underlying theme, maybe a not so subtle one, is Oppenheimer's ethical and moral lapses as he pursues his Faustian goal of scientific discovery. During his pursuit of his goal to know the truth Oppenheimer is given a chance at moral redemption in the play at the point where, learning of the defeat of Germany (the primary cause of the effort of the project) he could have made some move to halt the actual building and testing of the bomb, or helped modify or deny its ultimate use against Japanese cities. One such event occurs in 1945, after the surrender of Germany, which had been touted as the main purpose to build the bomb by the military , particularly when it was learned how far behind the German effort had progressed. It was at this juncture that young Robert Wilson (head of the Cyclotron Group and a fovorite of Oppenheimer) who upon discovering that the bomb was planned to be used against dense population centers in Japan as a means of infliciting psychological terror, attempts to circulate a letter to President Truman about the real impact of a nuclear attack on humanity. But Oppenheimer, instead sides with General Leslie Groves and intervenes to prevent the letter from circulating or reaching the President, stating that it was not the purview of science to make such decisions..but of the politicians.

At the end of the opera, the plaintive calls of a Japanese victim of the bombing, a mother, calling for help and begging for water are heard in the silenced opera house. The play has ended and the USA had entered the atomic age as the first nation to use weapons of mass destruction and psychological terror on another nation.

Oppenheimer's later life is not one of redemption and appears to in some ways follow the Faustian myth. After the end of the war, Oppenheimer is breifly lionized as as a war hero but soon evidence regarding possible connections with Communists arise, and he falls under suspicions of un-American sympathies. His government clearance is revoked. He is called to the Senate, McCarthy hearings where he is successfully pressured to reveal names of Communist sympathizers. Eventually he retires into partial obscurity.

I found the interrelationship of myth-story of Dr Faustus and Dr Atomic an interesting and illuminating relationship, and though Adams and Sellars seem to prefer distancing themselves from this idea, the relationships are inescapable. See below.


The Tragical History of Dr Faustus (1604)

Christopher (Kit) Marlowe (1564-1593)


Faustus who is born of lower class parents is inelegant and seeks knowledge. He pursues studies in Divinity as the epitome of knowledge and in which he eventually receives a doctorate. His sin is that of excessive pride. (And it is thought that Marlowe visualized a relationship between Faustus and of the Greek mythical Icarus, son of Daedalus (engineer and artisan who built the Labyrinth on Crete for King Minos) who, after a warning from his father who built their wings to escape from the tower where they were being held, Icarus, caught up in his fascination with heaven ignored the warning and flew too close to the sun which his waxen wings. Excessive pride was the cause. In the beginning of Marlowe's play Faustus tells us that he has exhausted each of the subjects he has studied. Logic, he states, is simply a weak tool for argument, medicine is a farce it can not raise the dead, law is petty and below his talents, Divinity is useless since all humans sin and salvation can not be guaranteed and thus (Che sara sara) or "what will be will be". Faustus calls on his servant Wagner to bring to him two famous magicians Valdes and Cornelius. They convince Faustus that magic would continue to excite his interest if he devotes himself to it. Soon afterward Faustus, using magic incantations calls on the devil to appear and Mephistopheles, a servant of Lucifer appears before him. Mephistopheles enchants Faustus with tricks and magic. Using Mephistopheles as a messenger to Lucifer, Faustus strikes a deal with the devil. Faustus is to be allotted 24 years of life with Mephistopheles as his personal servant. At the end of that time, he will give his soul over to Lucifer as payment and spend the rest of his life damned to hell. As the play progresses Faustus learns much about the sciences, astronomy, and the mysterious "nine spheres" by way of Mephestopheles' gifts. When he commands Mephistopheles to show him the personification of the seven deadly sins, Lucifer's agent finally begs the doctor to "leave these frivolous demands" but Faustus does not listen and persists in his demand. At the appearance of the seven sins Faustus is repulsed by their horrible aspect, and, as well, the fact that they recall to him of his own life. But he rejects the warnings of his conscience and, seeming set on his soul's damnation, he continues on his quest. Later, a good angel appears to him and begs him to repent, urging him to break his pact with Lucifer, but again he rejects this entreaty for his salvation and forges ahead to hell and damnation. In the end, nothing truly worthwhile comes from Faustus' pact with the devil and finally the 24 years have elapsed and Mephistopheles comes to collect Lucifer's payment. In the last scene Faustus' dismembered body is discovered by his friends strewn over the stage as a sign that his soul has been removed and of his damnation.

The play has an oft-quoted scene when Faustus summons the ghost of Helen of Troy:

Faust: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Illium?
Sweet Helen make me immortal with a kiss.."


Some thoughts on why we dropped the atomic bombs on Japan.

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom." (Thomas Payne "Common Sense" 1776)
We've all heard the shibboleths about why we did it and the outcrys in defense of "custom" when these are questioned...but did you know this?

According to Admiral William D. Leahy, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President Truman's Chief of Staff: "The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons... In being the first to use it [the atomic bomb], we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."

Think of it. We were the first terrorist nation. Let's try to do better in the future.