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First night 13 October 2008

 

Composer

John Adams

Librettist

Peter Sellars

Venue and Dates

New York Metropolitan

13, 18, 21, 25, 30 October, 1, 5, 8, 13 November 2008

 

Conductor

Alan Gilbert

Production

Revised production

Director: Penny Woolcock

Sets: Julian Crouch

Costumes: Catherine Zuber

Lighting: Brian MacDevitt

Choreographer: Andrew Dawson

Performers

J. Robert Oppenheimer: Gerald Finley

Kitty Oppenheimer: Sasha Cooke

General Leslie Groves: Eric Owens

Edward Teller: Richard Paul Fink

Jack Hubbard: tba

Robert Wilson: Thomas Glenn

Captain James Nolan: Roger Honeywell

Pasqualita: Meredith Arwady

Notes

Met premiere for the opera. Co-production with English National Opera


 

8 November 2008: The New York Met live broadcast will be of Doctor Atomic, 800 venues worldwide in 17 countries. 1 pm EST / 12 pm CST / 11 am MST /  10 am PST / 6 pm UTC / 7 pm CET

 

 

From the Met website

John Adams’s Doctor Atomic has its Met premiere on Monday, October 13, 2008, marking the first time an opera by Adams, one of the world’s most important composers, will be performed by the company. Penny Woolcock, who directed the 2002 movie version of Adams’s opera The Death of Klinghoffer, will make her opera directing debut with the new production. Improbable theater’s Julian Crouch, who makes his Met debut in the current season as associate director and set designer of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha, will design the sets for Doctor Atomic. Tony Award-winning designer Catherine Zuber, who made her Met debut last season with the Met’s new production of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, will design the costumes. Tony Award-winning artist Brian MacDevitt will be the lighting designer and Andrew Dawson makes his Met debut as choreographer. The video designers are Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer, for Fifty-Nine Productions, and the sound designer is Mark Grey in his Met debut.

 

Alan Gilbert, the newly appointed Music Director Designate of the New York Philharmonic, will make his Met debut conducting the new production. Gerald Finley reprises his acclaimed portrayal of Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the role he created in 2005. Sasha Cooke sings the role of his wife, Kitty, Eric Owens sings General Groves, and Richard Paul Fink sings the role of “the father of the hydrogen bomb,” Edward Teller. A co-production with English National Opera, Doctor Atomic—with a libretto by Peter Sellars, adapted from original sources—will open at ENO in February 2009.

Adams said of Doctor Atomic: “The atomic bomb is the all-American symbol of our darkest mythology—power, technology, science, and, of course, the responsibility of having the ability to destroy the planet. These are Wagnerian topics and they are ideally suited for operatic expression. This is really an opera in which life-and-death matters hover over every moment. It’s also an opera with sensuality and erotic beauty. I write them as expressive vehicles that go into the deepest parts of our feelings.”

“The most brilliant people in the world were all locked up together in one of the most beautiful places in the world,” said Woolcock. “They were pushing at the boundaries of knowledge, connecting with the essence of the universe. They were all so excited about what they were doing that most of them didn’t think about the fact that they were dealing with death and devastation on an unimaginable scale.”

 

 

Metropolitan Opera Season Preview: Now Hear This

Philipp Brieler, Playbillarts, 8 May 2008
http://www.playbillarts.com/features/article/7649.html

Stepping into the shoes of an artist like Scotto may be daunting, but baritone Gerald Finley faces no such challenge. He stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the title character of John Adams’s Doctor Atomic, which has its Met premiere in October in a staging by Woolcock. It’s a role Finley created at the opera’s 2005 world premiere at the San Francisco Opera. Doctor Atomic deals with a dramatic moment in the history of the 20th century—the creation of the atomic bomb—and Finley sees a lot of potential in the part and in what might be considered an unlikely operatic subject.  “The challenge for me is trying not to absorb the public perception of Oppenheimer as a failed and broken man,” he explains, “because at the time the opera is set, he was the most galvanizing, energetic person and a supremely respected motivator of his colleagues. It was hugely exciting for me to realize that he was a very positive figure, that there was no way to know this situation was going to be seen as a tragedy.”