{"id":1070,"date":"2008-11-10T00:18:15","date_gmt":"2008-11-10T00:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/?p=1070"},"modified":"2008-11-11T12:02:40","modified_gmt":"2008-11-11T12:02:40","slug":"dr-atomic-was-a-blast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/2008\/11\/10\/dr-atomic-was-a-blast\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Atomic – A Poignant Blast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday evening I spent three hours in one of the 850 theatres in 28 countries that were screening John Adams’s opera Dr Atomic<\/em><\/a> , live from the Metropolitan Opera<\/a> in New York.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Gerald Finley as J.Robert Oppenheimer (Photo NY Met Opera)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I thoroughly enjoyed this modern opera. Set around the first U.S. atomic bomb tests in 1945, Dr Atomic explores the tensions, dilemmas, and decisions that occupied the minds of J.Robert Oppenheimer<\/a>, his wife, and his project Trinity associates in the weeks, hours, and seconds leading up to the world’s first nuclear detonation.<\/p>\n

Lines taken directly from declassified documents lent authenticity. As did a suitably sinister Atom Bomb, it’s crude complexity resembling a lash-up from a PhD lab, but radiating a pawl of edgy doom as it hung center stage.<\/p>\n

Memorable moments along the way included the team’s sweepstake on expected explosive yield; Oppenheimer’s conservative estimate of 3kT (TNT equivalent) perhaps betraying a wishful regret that would later turn into his consuming guilt. And the other scientists, reluctant to put their money where their calculations had taken them – so massive, other, and beyond intuition were the predictions.<\/p>\n

We also saw the quintessential moral dilemma that faces most if not all scientists at some point. When to speak up, protest, do-the-right-thing; take and act on the responsibility that knowledge has both blessed and damned you with.<\/p>\n

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Trinity<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\n

Predictably, the finale was charged with tension and poignancy. The begoggled cast stared into the audience\/horizon for what seemed an eternity – as the minutes, then seconds, counted down to the detonation itself. In the final seconds, a translucent curtain descended between audience and stage with the typewritten words “give me some water” and we heard the stuttering voice of a Japanese child.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday evening I spent three hours in one of the 850 theatres in 28 countries that were screening John Adams’s opera Dr Atomic , live from the Metropolitan Opera in New York. I thoroughly enjoyed this modern opera. Set around the first U.S. atomic bomb tests in 1945, Dr Atomic explores the tensions, dilemmas, and … Continue reading Dr Atomic – A Poignant Blast<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[92,125,11,12],"tags":[94,332,100,335,334,98,95,330,333,93,97,331],"class_list":["post-1070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-film","category-physics","category-politics","tag-atom-bomb","tag-bfi-imax","tag-dr-atomic","tag-hiroshima","tag-japan","tag-john-adams","tag-los-alamos","tag-new-york-opera","tag-nuclear","tag-opera","tag-oppenheimer","tag-teller"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkpOr-hg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1070"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1094,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070\/revisions\/1094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}