Opera on atomic bomb focus of panel
Doctor Atomic is being performed in San Francisco. The opera, which draws in part on contemporary documents, memoirs and historical studies, is the focus of a panel discussion being held today.
BY LISA TREI
A discussion of Doctor Atomic, the new San Francisco Opera production about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the atomic bomb, will take place Wednesday, Oct. 12, from 4:15 to 6 p.m. in Bechtel Conference Center in Encina Hall.
The seminar, which is free and open to the public, is being held in observance of the 60th anniversary of the first testing of the atomic bomb and the world premier of composer John Adams' opera that runs through Oct. 22 at the War Memorial Opera House. Director Peter Sellars wrote the libretto, which draws in part on contemporary documents, memoirs and historical studies. It is Adams and Sellars' third operatic collaboration, and similar to Nixon in China (1987) and The Death of Leon Klinghoffer (1991), it touches on events that resonate in living memory.
Panelists at Stanford include David Holloway, the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History; American history Professor Barton J. Bernstein; filmmaker Jon Else, who in 1981 made The Day After Trinity, a documentary about Oppenheimer and the bomb; and Stanford alumnus Kip Cranna, musical administrator for the San Francisco Opera.
According to Holloway, the opera's title is slightly misleading because the storyline is more about the bomb than about Oppenheimer, the physicist who presided over the Manhattan Project and the birth of the nuclear age. The opera takes place in the tense hours before the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945, at a site that Oppenheimer named Trinity after a John Donne sonnet. Oppenheimer's charismatic character is not explored in depth—he is not portrayed as a hero but as a deeply conflicted man who has suppressed part of his humanity to carry out the task of building the bomb, Holloway explained.
One of the questions the seminar will address is what opera can do to add to society's understanding of such a "hugely significant" event, Holloway said. Through a combination of music, words, dance and visual settings, "Opera can make a deeper impact than any other art form," he said. "We don't expect it to be history, but it brings home the sheer awfulness and awesomeness of the bomb." It also provides a jolt to society's somewhat jaded consciousness of the nuclear danger, Holloway noted in an upcoming review for the British journal Physics World.
Bernstein, who was interviewed before he saw the opera, was more critical of Doctor Atomic. "The concept of making an opera out of recent history is flawed," he said. "The [creators] will claim artistic freedom, but they want to use real names. I'm going to contend it's a flawed operation and intellectually irresponsible." Bernstein is editor of The Atomic Bomb and has written extensively about the Truman administration and nuclear history.
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