Introduction

Few events in the history of science have been as fraught with drama as the making of the atom bomb. In terms of scientific knowledge there were far more important milestones, but the story of the bomb involves a previously unheard of power of man over his environment, the unleashing of elemental forces of nature, and the colossal potential for destruction. These are materials so dramatic that the simple retelling of the story cannot really convey their impact and significance.

The situation and environment in which the bomb was prepared have always struck me as uniquely exciting. The project brought together an unprecedented collection of brilliant physicists working together in an isolated situation. Some of them confessed later that in the excitement of the work they quite forgot its implications. These were among the best scientists of the day, and the project was the most intriguing and uncertain imaginable; no one really knew what the result or consequences could be. Much has been written about this, and one senses that for all involved it was a unique, hugely exciting and dramatic experience. In addition it seems to have been a lot of fun. The scientists seem to have reveled in each others company, as well as in the focused feeling of working in concert on such a project, and their accounts of the time spent on the project sound at times like reports by a happy child from summer camp. This may be why so few of them seem to have given profound thought to the lethal and cosmic implications of their work.

Now the drama has been given form in a media perhaps most suited for its huge scale – the opera. In 2005, sixty years after the first test of the atom bomb, the San Francisco Opera commissioned composer John Adams to write music for an opera about Robert Oppenheimer and the bomb. The opera, named Dr. Atomic, is loosely based on Richard Rhodes’ book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. The director, who also wrote the libretto, was Peter Sellars. The opera deals with the Manhattan Project, and with the scientists working on the atom bomb just before it was first tested.

Opera is generally called a larger-than-life medium, that is, larger than “life” used in its everday sense of the word: it is larger than that little outer life where people restrain themselves, reserve their private thoughts to themselves, and communicate in quiet code. In opera people do not (only) talk to each other, they sing their hearts out, so that the full passion of their inner lives finds external expression. The music can convey tumultuous inner feelings as well as the tremendous events of life and death which after all pervade our everyday lives.

The passion in the Manhattan Project was not the general stuff of operas: its main motif was not unhappy love, fury, revenge. But there is another human passion no less insatiable which prevailed in this story – the passion for knowledge. The main drama of the event was that the passion for knowledge was so insatiable that it knew no bounds and overstepped any consideration of morality. This is not a passion that appears in telenovellas, but it is no less powerful and consuming. This is the story of Faust, of he who had to know at all costs, and was willing to sell his soul for this. That in fact was the original idea of the people who commissioned the opera, but the opera as written did not keep to this idea at all.

What else, then, did the creators find worthy of operatic scale? The bomb itself, the incarnation of powers so tremendous they could destroy the world – this is akin in scope to the gods and goddesses of Wagnerian opera, to the death and madness of Verdi. This too could be a reason to put the story to music.

What did the opera as written do to the story? Did it convey the terror and scope of the powers unleashed? What human passion did it evoke? How effective was its treatment of this immense and exciting episode of human history?

Background

In the 1930's it was suspected that the Germans were developing an atomic bomb. This idea was put forth with force by three physicists who had come to the United States as refugees from Europe: Leo Szilard, Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner. They felt it was imperative to convince the United States government to embark on research of its own, and went to Einstein for help in convincing President Roosevelt. Einstein and Szilard wrote a letter to the president in 1939, and Roosevelt authorized the project. It began as a small research project and mushroomed into a massive endeavor employing over 130,000 people. In 1942 General Leslie Groves was given charge, and Groves appointed Robert Oppenheimer as the project's scientific director, despite Oppenheimer's left-wing political views which were considered dubious.

The research was centered at Los Alamos, originally a ranch school in New Mexico, and involved nearly all the leading scientists of the period, from the veteran Nils Bohr to the young and then unknown Richard Feynman. The only major scientist (to my knowledge) who categorically refused to take part in the project was Lise Meitner. Facilities were built at Los Alamos for all the scientists, technicians, and their work, and they remained there for several years. On July 16, 1945 the first atom bomb was tested at Alamagordo, New Mexico. The opera takes place at Los Alamos and then at the test site.

Following the project many scientists began to worry about what they had done, and organized a concerted effort to ensure that control of the bomb would be in civilian rather than military hands. Reams have been written about the decision to develop the bomb, and it brought forth a new attitude to science: before that science had been regarded as a certain road to progress, and only now was it seen as a danger. There is even more debate about the decision to drop the bomb. Many feel that this was in fact unnecessary, as Japan had actually been defeated already.

The opera’s creators

The libretto of Dr. Atomic was put together by the director, Peter Sellars, after the original librettist, Alice Goodman, withdrew from the project at a very late date. Sellars did not write a conventional libretto, but put together a collage from a variety of original sources. These include poems by Baudelaire and John Donne, both poets beloved by Oppenheimer, and the poetry gave the libretto its lyricism. In addition Sellars made use of excerpts from various memoirs and histories of the project. Now that sixty years have passed, U.S. government documents about the project have been declassified and he used these as well, so that the story is based on historically accurate detail.

The opera was originally commissioned with the intention to portray Robert Oppenheimer as a contemporary Dr. Faustus, selling his soul for knowledge. However Adams and Sellars preferred to avoid this and attempt a more complex many faceted portrayal, showing Oppenheimer as a complicated human being and not a symbolic figure. The question is whether the thrust of the story remained, or was it dissipated by the detailed realistic treatment of the hero. Opera generally works best in broad brushstrokes. But Sellars is a brilliantly successful opera director, with acknowledged mastery of the medium, and Adams is considered one of America’s foremost composers.

* photos from http://baybuzz.blogspot.com/2005/

John Adams was born in 1947, worked in San Francisco where he was appointed contemporary music adviser to the San Francisco Symphony and then its composer-in-residence. His operas, including Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, are among the most performed modern works in recent history. Both have contemporary stories as subject matter. The first as the title implies deals with Nixon’s visit to China, and the second with the terrorist attack on the Achille Lauro ship. Adams’ music is labeled contemporary and minimalist, that is, it utilizes repetition of short musical phrases, repetition of short musical phrases, with minimal variations over long periods of time; a steady pulse, and has much in common with contemporary electronic music. Dr. Atomic includes sounds from the modern world such as running motors, pop music of the 1940s, and people communicating, including crying babies and Japanese speakers. This is Adams’ third opera, and this as well as the two previous works is a collaboration with Peter Sellars.

Peter Sellars studied at Harvard and then in Japan, China and India. He achieved star status as a director in his early twenties. He has directed in theater as well as opera, and his productions are generally considered innovative and groundbreaking. He has specialized in 20^th century operas, has won numerous awards and is one of the world’s most renowned directors.[i]

The opera’s story

The opera describes the period preceding the first test of the bomb in the New Mexico desert. The first act takes place about a month before the test, in June 1945, and the second act begins the day preceding the test and ends with the explosion itself. The main characters are the scientists, Oppenheimer, Edward Teller and others, as well as Oppenheimer’s wife Kitty and General Groves, the gifted commander of the project.

In the opening scene, following a chorus which describes the situation, we see Edward Teller approaching Oppenheimer with a letter by Leo Szilard, which implores the scientists to take a moral stand on the atom bomb, since they who are involved in it are in the best position to do so. Oppenheimer’s response is that Teller and the others should steer clear of political pronouncements. Oppenheimer himself has already been under government suspicion due to his involvement with the Communist Party.

Robert Wilson, an idealistic young physicist, is organizing a meeting among the scientists to discuss the moral implications of the bomb. Wilson wants the scientists to sign a petition that the bomb must not be dropped on Japan before they are given clear terms for peace and a chance to surrender. He thinks the bomb should be dropped at a remote site in order to demonstrate its power to the Japanese . Germany has already surrendered, and the need for the bomb is not morally as clear cut as before. Oppenheimer describes the government decision to bomb civilian targets in order to make a profound psychological impression, and Wilson is outraged.

The next scene is at the Oppenheimer’s house in Los Alamos, with Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty, a romantic scene with singing about the struggle for a better world, “a world is to be fought for, sung and built”. The scene then moves to the Alamagordo test site, the night before the test. Tensions are rising, and as if the physical world reflects this, a storm has broken. The dangers of the bomb are stressed, and then General Groves, the gifted commander of the project, has a private and personal moment alone with Oppenheimer. He leaves and Oppenheimer sings words from a poem by John Donne that inspired him to call the test site “Trinity”. And so the opera continues, showing Oppenheimer’s personal moments, his wife and child, his love of poetry and personal vision, contrasted with the tension and danger of the bomb test right ahead.

At the test site, Oppenheimer, Groves and Teller discuss the dangers, the risk that the bomb might destroy the earth’s atmosphere. There is a rumor that Fermi has been taking bets on this. Finally, at 5 AM, everyone waits for the final countdown. Oppenheimer, wrecked by nerves, tries to calm himself by reading poetry but has hallucinations. Finally the bomb goes off. However this is not represented by flashy pyrotechnics, probably on the (presumably justified) assumption that it would be impossible to simulate within the confined space of a stage. On stage the audience sees most of the cast down on their chests, with drums beating in the background, then raising their heads to look into intense red and yellow light. As the music fades a Japanese voice is heard repeating, "A drink of water, please." - the desperate request of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The libretto is not without historical distortions. The real Oppenheimer did not display emotional conflict about the bomb. On the contrary, he led a scientific panel that recommended against a demonstration of the bomb at a remote site, where its impact might be less impressive. He advised the military how the bomb should be dropped and detonated to maximize the destruction and terrifying visual effects of a nuclear explosion. On the evening after Hiroshima, the real Oppenheimer celebrated the event before a packed auditorium at Los Alamos, declaring that he was proud of what the laboratory had accomplished. Years later he said that he never regretted his role in developing the bomb.

That does not prove anything as to his inmost feelings, and perhaps without disclosing it he was beset with doubts, but the external evidence does not show this. In the opera, he has been given a central role in embodying the conflict, so that he personifies the dilemma, and that is probably not true in reality. However it is their way of transforming history into art. The story itself is beset with such conflict, and the character of Oppenheimer is made into its symbol and vessel.

In addition, Oppenheimer's wife is painted in the opera as a feminine force representing the inner morality, as opposed to the male world of aggressive development. Her opening aria in the beginning of Act Two is an impassioned plea for peace. This was apparently far from the truth; Kitty Oppenheimer was extremely eager for her husband to succeed and for the project to go through. However Sellars and Adams used the female character to represent in symbolic form an opposing principle.

The production

The visual aspects of the production met with mixed reactions and have been termed heavy-handed. The set was bare, apparently in accordance with the minimalism of the music, but various objects appeared and disappeared in symbolic rather than realistic fashion. A life-size model of the bomb hung in the air all through the second act, and at one point descended towards the baby's crib underneath.[ii] Obviously the visual direction was intended to reflect the power and cosmic implications of the subject matter, giving this impression by means of minimalism and symbolism. This does not seem to accord with the creators' proclaimed intention to portray Oppenheimer in his full complexity rather than as a larger-than-life Faustian figure. However it obviously suited the music, which was powerfully impressive and created a compelling atmosphere.

The production included a chorus, whose singing was powerful. However they continually shifted poles and scaffoldings around the stage, presumably to convey an impression of work being done. This was apparently confusing rather than effective. Similarly ineffective was the use of dancers, weaving among the singers for reasons unclear. The detonation of the bomb itself presented a problem, and it was evidently considered preferable to restrain from flashy effects and trust that the power of the music and the reality of the situation would have sufficient dramatic weight.

An unexpected pleasure was that the protagonists of this opera were so unusual. Scientists are considered dull figures by the general public. As New York Times reviewer (and former physics student) Dennis Overbye wrote: " To hear the chorus of khaki-clad scientists and engineers sing of such matters is to have the gritty details of engineering and science raised to liturgy. It re-mythologized the atomic project for me in a way that I had not thought possible."[iii]

Reactions

There were some problems with the (minimal) physics in the opera. American Physical Society president Marvin L. Cohen describes his visit to a workshop shortly before the opera opened[iv]:

When the performance of the excerpt ended, my hand flew up immediately. I stated that 2005 had been designated the WYP celebrating the 100^th anniversary of Einstein's year of great discoveries, including his equation, E=mc². I emphasized that this equation shows that matter can be changed into energy. More importantly, considering the opera's theme, that's how you make an atomic bomb. You destroy a little bit of matter and turn it into a huge amount of energy.

The opening lines of the opera are from the 1945 "Smyth Report," which goes on to make exactly the same point about E=mc², but in the opera, the quote was incomplete. I naively assumed that composer John Adams and director/librettist Peter Sellars would change the offending lines. It's one of the characteristics of being a professor: you assume people are listening to you, and that they will react appropriately when corrected.

John Adams was informed about this problem two weeks before the opening and tried to correct the problem but then gave up and said the change will have to come with the next production. Adams was scheduled to speak about his opera the day before and the evening of the opening, and one suspects he lost his voice to laryngitis because of the tremendous stress this problem added to the normal stresses of opening such a huge ambitious theatrical work.[v]

The APS president was invited to the workshop as it was hoped that the APS would endorse the opera. However they did not, instead issuing a statement that "The American Physical Society recognizes the importance of the Manhattan Project in our history and endorses the creative role of the arts in helping the public to understand it". Apparently in addition to the concern about scientific accuracy, some Board members were worried about the message Dr. Atomic conveys about physicists and their ethics.

Discussion

The creators of the opera were drawn to the subject by its moral complexity. Peter Sellars sees the story as relevant for today in light of the "war on terror", which he seems to think embodies similar moral complexity[vi]. John Adams said that the bomb represented a “dividing line in human history, when the human species was no longer riding along with the rest of God’s creation . . . but suddenly was in a position to destroy the nest, to literally destroy the planet. That seemed to be a theme that was worthy of my time.”[vii] It seems that the music – though perhaps not the physical staging - did reflect the awesome nature of the bomb. The libretto succeeded in conveying the scale and gravity of the moral decisions involved. The historical distortions served to clarify the issues. One can always question whether a subject may have been presented in a different or more effective fashion, but this is certainly a subject worth presenting, and the work seems to have done it justice.

Sources

http://doctor-atomic.com/

For striking photos see

http://baybuzz.blogspot.com/2005/10/dr-atomic-blasts-off.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4948871

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Atomic

John Adams biography:

http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx?

TabId=2419&State_2872=2&ComposerId_2872=10

On the Manhattan Project see http://www.atomicmuseum.com/tour/manhattanproject.cfm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos_National_Laboratory