John Adams- Doctor Atomic- Batter My Heart

The precision of the deliberations over how the bomb can be best made to terrify the Japanese into surrender is chilling, as is the mundanity of the scientists’ daily lives (they take bets on the likely yield of the bomb, and with particularly black humour, it’s pointed out to the military man in charge, General Leslie Groves, that anyone wishing to deduce the supposedly top secret location of the test site needs only to follow the trail of beer cans from Santa Fe). Adams approaches the subject with utter seriousness and an all-seeing eye for detail: the libretto is unlike any other, crafted by assembling fragments of documented quotations from scientists, military and government officials. There can hardly be a more important subject for opera than our gaining the ability to destroy our entire planet and the people who gave us the tools to do so. Meanwhile, Adams’ music has spent most of the previous hour preparing your ears for this: the insistent rhythms envelop your senses, while your brain is jarred by the contrast of the spirituality of Donne’s words against the harsh, prosaic military language that has preceded it. Finley’s delivery was spellbinding: his smooth and warm baritone steadily increasing in fervency in a perfectly measured crescendo of emotion. The context is the detonation of the first atomic bomb: the realisation is dawning on Robert Oppenheimer of how terrifying and beyond his control are the forces he is releasing: his escape is to retreat into poetry – in this case, Donne’s sonnet Batter my heart, three person’d God. At the Barbican last night, Gerald Finley, John Adams and the BBC Symphony Orchestra combined to deliver the heaviest operatic punch I’ve been subjected to all year, at the close of the first half of Doctor Atomic. Like a golfer craving that elusive perfect tee shot long and straight down the middle, what keeps me coming back to opera is the hope of a perfect “wow” moment where music, voice and dramatic setting come together to knock me sideways.

John Adams- Doctor Atomic- Batter My Heart