Santa Fe Opera's "Doctor Atomic" is first John Adams opera at company

Ryan McKinny and Daniel Okulitch (Photo: Ken Howard, Santa Fe Opera, 2018)

The Santa Fe Opera is presenting its first John Adams opera ever, which is surprising considering their historic dedication to both new opera and those by American composers. The all-star cast includes barihunks Ryan McKinny as Robert Oppenheimer, Andrew Harris as Edward Teller and Daniel Okulitch as General Groves, as well as Julia Bullock as Kitty Oppenheimer, Ben Bliss as Robert Wilson, Meredith Arwady as Pasqualita and Tim Mix as Jack Hubbard.

Much of the opera actually takes place just 33 miles from Santa Fe in Los Alamos and Alamogordo, where the detonation of the first atomic bomb took place.

Andrew Harris and Ryan McKinny (Photo: Ken Howard, Santa Fe Opera, 2018)

First performed in 2005 at the San Francisco Opera, Doctor Atomic reunited composer John Adams with librettist and stage director Peter Sellars, whose earlier collaborations included Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer. The European premiere took place at De Nederlandse Opera in 2007 and The Metropolitan Opera broadcast the work nationally in 2008.

Much of the text from the opera was adapted from declassified U.S. government documents and communications among scientists, government officials, and military personnel who were involved in the project. Other borrowed texts include poetry by Charles Baudelaire and Muriel Rukeyser, the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, quotes from the Bhagavad Gita, and a traditional Tewa Indian song.

Gerald Finley sings "Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God"

Perhaps the most famous piece from the opera is the baritone aria "Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God" with text by the poet John Donne. The poem actually inspired Oppenheimer to name his test site for the atomic bomb “Trinity.”

Additional performances at the Santa Fe Opera are on July 27, and August 2, 7 and 16. Tickets are available online.

Lee Poulis back as Oppenheimer; Don Giovanni to be broadcast

Lee Poulis gloriously shirtless onstage and off

We think the world would be a better place of American barihunk Lee Poulis would just walk around shirtless all of the time. We just learned that he's returning to a role where he'll be decked out in a suit, so we thought we'd share some of these pictures.

Poulis will be returning to the role of Robert Oppenheimer in John Adams' Doctor Atomic at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, Spain on March 13, 16 and 18. Jessica Rivera will sing the role of Kitty Oppenheimer. Poulis first sang the role in the German premiere in 2010 at the Saarländisches Staatstheater in Saarbrücken. He then reprised the role a year later at the Finnish National Opera.

Tickets and additional cast information for the Seville performances are available online.

Lee Poulis as Robert Oppenheimer in Saarbrücken

If you can't make it to Seville, Poulis will be performing Leporello opposite the Don Giovanni of fellow barihunk Christopher Burchett at the Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre on January 16 and 18. The January 16th performance will be also broadcast on Iowa Public Radio at 2 PM CST. Click HERE for the broadcast. He previously sang the title role in Don Giovanni at Sarasota Opera in 2011.

"Hurricane Irene" Forces NY Cancellations

Hurricane Irene from space

Hurricane Irene is blowing more wind than a Wagnerian soprano at the end of the Ring Cycle and she's wreaking havoc up and down the eastern seaboard. A number of performances have been canceled because of the storm, including all of today's performances on Broadway. The Metropolitan Opera has delayed the start of its Summer HD Festival. The two opera screenings scheduled for Saturday, August 27 and Sunday, August 28 have been canceled. The festival will open on Monday, August 30 at 8:30 p.m. with Gluck's "Iphigenie en Tauride," which had been scheduled to start at 8 p.m. that evening. The festival runs through Sept. 5.

The closing night of the Mostly Mozart Festival at Avery Fisher Hall, scheduled for 8 p.m. Saturday, has also been canceled.

We can't think of many operas that have natural disasters in the plot other than Catalani's "La Wally," where the heroine dies in an avalanche. Unfortunately, the well-known arias are for soprano and tenor. The closest we could come was John Adams' masterpiece "Doctor Atomic" where there is a nuclear explosion. Here is Gerald Finley singing the great baritone aria "Batter my heart" from the end of Act I:



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