I really enjoyed an opera today. Not kind of enjoyed it, like with the Portland Opera's Faust a couple of years back. Not somewhat enjoyed it, like with Willamette's Dramatic Vocal Arts' Die Fledermaus last spring. No, I actually enjoyed an entire opera, three-and-a-half hours though it was. Dr. Atomic, John Adams' newest opera, premiered a couple years ago with the San Francisco Opera. I guess it's hit the big time now that the Metropolitan Opera's performed it. Not only that, but they sent it live to movie theaters all over the country in high definition, which is how I saw it in Portland. The opera's subject was the coolest part of the entire show. Science has always fascinated me, as has politics, and their intersection always causes fireworks. Galileo and Copernicus, Darwin, Marie Curie, even Albert Einstein. But no bigger fireworks have erupted than those from the Manhattan Project. The beaurocratic back-and-forth was the most fascinating past of Dr. Atomic: the general who wanted to go forward with the test no matter what, the meteorologist who was ordered to give a more favorable weather forecast, the low-ranked scientist whose warnings about the test were completely ignored, due to the urgency of an...
Continue reading And suddenly, opera is worth it again!.
