John Adams Talk – Opera Americana

Well, I’m not big on opera, but last night’s talk got me really excited about going to see Dr. Atomic. I am that person that nods off instantly at the mere word opera, but I am also a geek who loves science, and a pacifist who abhors violence, so the idea of Dr. Atomic is right up my alley. What struck me the most about last night’s talk was how down to earth and passionate Adams was about this complicated and seemingly ugly aspect of American history. I loved how he and his team used existing materials – newsreels, popular texts promoting the bomb, John Donne poems that Oppenheimer carried around in his pocket to keep him calm, and especially the Native American poetry speaking to a counter-cosmology that these scientists couldn’t really see all around them. I had no idea that a libretto could be written that way, like a collage of some sort.

I was especially impressed with Adams’ lack of pretense about being this world-renown composer who has deliberately chosen to focus on an American audience by “trying to create an American tradition that’s about American themes…using singers who are able to sing as if they are speaking”. I think any American of a certain age (ie: who could remember Nixon, Oppenheimer, etc) could not help but be drawn to the clips we saw – Nixon meeting Mao on the tarmac, Oppenheimer alone with his bomb, etc. All that being said, I am sure there are many opera aficionados who would, for the very reasons I just mentioned, not like Adams’ approach at all. And I think it is interesting to think about how Adams’ work fits into/disrupts the genre of opera at large.

Can’t wait for November 5th!

//Lynn