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• Wednesday, June 21, 2006 08:34 PM

  Great article, much thanks

  This was just what I needed to read. Very cool stuff, I'll have to experience more.

  However:

  In recent years, genetics, math and physics have informed, respectively, genuinely moving works in literature (Richard Powers' "The Gold Bug Variations"), theater (David Auburn's "Proof") and opera (John Adams' "Doctor Atomic").

  I flew to San Francisco to see Dr. Atomic with my husband and two friends and we all thought it sucked big time. My husband and I are physicists and well acquainted with the subject matter. And my two friends are experienced opera lovers with excellent taste and connections.

  Dr. Atomic wasn't moving. And it wasn't opera.

  We all decided together that it was a self-indulgent rehash of sixties teeth gnashing over the Atomic Age (TM).

  We also all decided together that what it needed to be moving and to be opera and to be relevant to our time was:

  1. Oppenhiemer's wife and maid needed some real emotions to express, rather than the slogans they chanted that represented the author's vision of their place in the socio-political-mythical landscape.

  2. Some Pakistani and Indian nuclear bomb physicists swinging from trapezes making comments on the past from the POV of today might have been a nice touch.

  3. Why couldn't the bomb have a personality? It's the villain of the story. How dead is an opera where the villain can't say his or her piece?

  So much for my opinion on Dr. Atomic. If they want to rework the libretto, I am available for consultation.

  —Patricia Schwarz
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