Lyric Opera offers captivating new theater with 'Doctor Atomic'
The John Adams-Peter Sellars team has created another captivating night in the theater with "Doctor Atomic," which opened Friday night at Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Commissioned by the Lyric, along with the San Francisco Opera Association and The Netherlands Opera,"Doctor Atomic" arrives here having already been seen in San Francisco (2005) and earlier this year in Amsterdam.
As with any new opera, repetition allows the creators to make adjustments: adding or subtracting, or generally polishing the score, libretto and staging. Adams, one of the United States' most honored living composers, is making his Lyric Opera debut, while Sellars, the librettist and stage director, is back for the first time since 1989.
Related coverage Review: Lyric Opera offers captivating new theater with 'Doctor Atomic' [12/15/07] Sellars, Adams pair in return to Lyric [12/14/07] 'Doctor Atomic' counts down to Chicago premiere [12/13/07] "Doctor Atomic" is Adams' longest opera to date (and his fifth collaboration with Sellars as stage director), and he has chosen an appropriately complex subject: the hours leading up to the first test of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos, N.M., in mid-July 1945. Rather than dwelling on scientific details, "Doctor Atomic" deals with the moralistic human side of the story.The Doctor Atomic of the title is physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the role's 2005 creator, Canadian baritone Gerald Finley, reprises it at the Lyric. Now well settled into the role, Finley brings great nuance to his portrayal of a emotionally conflicted man who realizes his great scientific achievement also has the potential to destroy mankind.The dramatic high point for Finley closes Act 1, with an aria set to the opening stanza of John Donne's sonnet, "Batter my heart, three-person'd God," a favorite of Oppenheimer's wife, Kitty, and the reason he named the test site "Trinity."Kitty Oppenheimer, portrayed by soprano Jessica Rivera, has two powerful scenes, one with her husband in Act 1 and another near the end of the opera, which was added by Adams and Sellars for the Lyric's production.Army Gen. Leslie Groves, the manager of the top-secret Manhattan Project, is portrayed with humorous bluster in a "just get the job done" manner the American bass-baritone Eric Owens. Groves has several of the opera's funniest lines, including a delightful scene when he demands a fair-weather forecast from his meteorologist, Jack Hubbard (baritone James Maddalena), threatening to replace him if he doesn't keep an impending thunder storm at bay.Third-year Ryan Opera Center contralto Meredith Arwady wears all her emotions on her sleeve as the Tewa Indian maid Pasqualita, whose lullaby to the Oppenheimers' infant daughter is a vocal treasure.Adams' score is written for full orchestra, with the composer's trademark pulsating rhythms balanced by stretches of serene beauty. The orchestra's live music is augmented periodically by dramatic movie theater-style recorded surround-sound effects.Donald Nally's Lyric Opera Chorus makes its usual solid contribution, most impressively in Act 2 when the god Vishnu appears in a vision with the chorus quoting from the text of the Bhagavad-Gita, "At the sight of this, Shape stupendous!"Atlanta Symphony Orchestra music director Robert Spano shows full command of Adams' complex music right through the opera's conclusion, when the composer and Sellars choose to end the opera in total silence and darkness, not with a flash of light from the explosion.We all know history #8230; that the bomb went off as Oppenheimer and his team planned. A speculative silence on the future of the world is really the ideal operatic ending."Doctor Atomic"Where: Ardis Krainik Theatre, Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive.When: Additional performances at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Jan. 9, 12, 15 and 19; 2 p.m. Jan. 5Tickets: Call (312) 332-2244, Ext. 5600, or visit lyricopera.org, for availability and reservations; major credit cards accepted.At a glance:Opera in two acts by John Adams, with libretto and stage direction by Peter Sellars. Co-production of Lyric Opera, San Francisco Opera and The Netherlands Opera. Adrianne Lobel, set designer; Dunya Ramicova, costume designer; Donald Nally, chorus master; Lyric Opera of Chicago Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Robert Spano.Starring:Gerald Finley as J. Robert OppenheimerEric Owens as Gen. Leslie GrovesJessica Rivera as Kitty OppenheimerMeredith Arwady as PasqualitaJames Maddalena as Jack HubbardRichard Paul Fink as Edward TellerThomas Glenn as Robert Wilson