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FW: ATom Bomb Opera
For your information.
-- John
John P. Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
3050 Traymore Lane
Bowie, MD 20715-2024
e-mail: jenday1@msn.com
-----Original Message-----
. . .
http://www.nandotimes.com/entertainment/story/670776p-5008721c.html
Composer John Adams commissioned to write atom bomb opera
By RONALD BLUM, Associated Press
(December 11, 2002 7:43 p.m. EST) - John Adams has been commissioned by
the San Francisco Opera to compose "Doctor Atomic," a work about the
development of the atomic bomb by American scientists in 1940s.
Alice Goodman, who collaborated on Adams' two previous operas, will write
the libretto, which centers on J. Robert Oppenheimer, who headed the
Manhattan Project.
Peter Sellars will direct, as he did in the premiere productions of Adams'
"Nixon in China" in 1987 at the Houston Grand Opera and "The Death of
Klinghoffer" in 1992 at the Theatre Royale de Monnaie in Brussels,
Belgium.
Donald Runnicles, the SFO's music director since 1992, will conduct. The
premiere is scheduled for September 2005 at San Francisco's War Memorial
Opera House. The production will be shared with the Lyric Opera of
Chicago.
"It involves what I call American mythology," Adams said this week in a
telephone interview. "That was what drew me to the 'Nixon in China' story
as well. I grew up in the late 1950s and '60s, the worst part of the cold
war, and these images are planted in my consciousness."
The chief characters have not yet been cast. Oppenheimer will be a
baritone, and other characters include Edward Teller (bass-baritone),
Kitty Oppenheimer (mezzo-soprano), Mici Teller (high mezzo-soprano), Elsie
McMillan (high soprano) and a triple tenor role: Sen. Hickenlooper, King
Juda of the Bikini Islands and Edwin McMillan.
SFO general director Pamela Rosenberg first suggested the idea to Adams in
November 1999, a year and a half before she formally took over the
company.
"I wanted to have a new music drama by him after 'Klinghoffer' and 'Nixon
in China.' I've got this incredible composer sitting right across the bay
in Berkeley," she said.
Adams plans to start composing next summer, after he finishes commissions
for the San Francisco Symphony and the opening of Disney Hall in Los
Angeles.
"I'm interested in using in part the structure of the 1950s science
fiction movie," Adams said. "These events were played out during a time
when all those movies about bombs and monsters and strange genetic
mutations were very popular, and they invaded the consciousness, the
unconsciousness, of the country. That's why I chose the title, because it
had a certain '50s, sci-fi resonance."
Adams, 55, has composed many news works, including "El Nino" and "On the
Transmigration of Souls," commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in
remembrance of the victims of last year's terrorist attacks.
The SFO also has staged the world premieres of Conrad Susa's "The
Dangerous Liasons" in 1994, Andre Previn's "A Streetcar Named Desire" in
1998 and Jake Heggie's "Dean Man Walking" two years ago.
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