Doctor Atomic arose from a series of commissions by the San Francisco Opera House on the theme of Faust, and more precisely on what relevance this mythical topic could still have in a country like the United States. John Adams and his librettist Peter Sellars had the idea of linking up Faust's demiurge utopia with one of the greatest scientific and human adventures of the 20th century – the Manhattan Project, which was to end in developing the most excessive, most Mephistophelean weapon in history: the atomic bomb. Mastering matter to make a weapon of destruction – what more could inspire these two artists who were so close to the daily reality of their contemporaries and the excesses of our world...
– from the Opéra national du Rhin website
Update 5/7/2014: This is will be available for free on MediciTV for about a month or so, and for about a year on Culturebox.
Dr. and Mrs. Oppenheimer will be sung by RnR favorites: Baritone Dietrich Henschel, seen and heard in Pelléas et Mélisande, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, and Capriccio, to name a few; and mezzo Anna Grevelius, who we developed a crush on when she appeared at La Monnaie as Annio in La Clemenza di Tito.