Girls of the Golden West

Hye Jung Lee, Julia Bullock, J'Nai Bridges 

Here are our Girls of the Golden West, a new opera by John Adams on a libretto assembled by Peter Sellars.  I say assembled because there is no evidence he wrote any of these words himself.  The characters of the opera represent real people whose words are used.  Some of the words are from a speech by Frederick Douglas and were sung by Davóne Tines.  An opera about California should start in California at the San Francisco Opera.

Conductor Grant Gershon *
Director Peter Sellars

Clarence (bass-baritone) Ryan McKinny *
Dame Shirley (soprano) Julia Bullock *
Ned Peters, fugitive slave (bass-baritone) Davóne Tines *
Joe Cannon (tenor) Paul Appleby
Ah Sing (soprano) Hye Jung Lee
Ramón (baritone) Elliot Madore
Josefa Segovia (mezzo-soprano) J'Nai Bridges
Lola Montez (dancer) Lorena Feijóo
Fayette, Dame Shirley's husband (silent) Kai Brothers

Up by the proscenium were what appeared to be speakers. Toward the end of the opera I experienced pain in my ears which I attribute to these.

There are many many stories and little continuity.  Joe Cannon is abandoned by his girl friend in Missouri and takes up with Ah Sing, a prostitute.  Joe secretly marries Ah Sing who thinks she has it made.  Joe and the crowd then turn on her and drive her off.

Dame Shirley portrays Lady Macbeth along with her narrator role.  Her husband Fayette is seen, but she spends most of her time with Ned.

I have seen Peter Sellars' work as a director of other people's works in his original Da Ponte/Mozart trio of operas, in Vivaldi's Griselda at Santa Fe, in The Death of Klinghoffer in San Francisco, in Theodora from Glyndebourne, in the Bach St. Matthew Passion from Berlin and in last summer's La Clemenza di Tito from Salzburg.  I didn't wildly hate any of these though Griselda seemed beyond anyone.  In contrast I wildly loved the Bach and Clemenza di Tito.  This was a great surprise for me.  Theodora was also excellent.

The list of his text assemblages that I have seen consists of El Nino, Doctor Atomic, and his newest Girls.  El Nino was rather like an oratorio and might have worked if I had seen it live or in a split screen filming.  Other people liked Doctor Atomic better than I did.  But assembling fragments of only roughly unrelated texts into something that only approximates a story doesn't work for me.

Sellars seems to be seeking to transform the genre into something representing truth.  Real words are closer to truth than made up ones, I guess.  He hasn't yet sold me.

I don't want to leave this subject before mentioning how much I loved Julia Bullock whom I have never heard before.  Every note, every word was a diamond.  She raised her character to greatness.  J'Nai Bridges was also beautiful.  Adams' music was generally good but sometimes excruciatingly loud.  There were occasional scenes of greatness.

The guitar and the accordion did not make it into the program.

Pointillism

The topic of pointillism came up in a conversation in Facebook, so I thought I would do a blog post.

Pointillism started out as an art term and refers to what Georges Seurat was doing with little dots.  Each dot seems to have nothing to do with those around it.  When you stand back from the painting, there is a picture.

Music adopted this word to mean that in twentieth century music each individual note seems to have nothing to do with those around it.  Emphasis is on the word "seems."   In the Schoenberg school Klangfarbenmelodie [tone color melody] is said to represent this.  It looks very strange on an orchestral score, but when played, sounds like a tune with a lot of different instrumental colors.

I'm only familiar with the term applied to melodic lines designed for opera singers.  Traditionally a melody is constructed from notes similar in pitch.  A pointillistic melody jumps around to different far apart pitches, sometimes in different octaves and was a significant feature of modernist opera.

This aria from Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre is the best example I could find.  It features the great Barbara Hannigan.



John Adams jettisoned most of modernism for Nixon in China, but he kept the jumping around in pitch.  This example is minimalism.



Do these examples still have melodies?  Decide for yourself.  As you were.

Justice Ginsburg rules

WASHINGTON—Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Monday pronounced her verdict on “The Death of Klinghoffer”: Not guilty.  See article here.

The Death of Klinghoffer

MS Achille Lauro was a cruise ship based in Naples, Italy, that was hijacked by four members of the Palestine Liberation Front in 1985.  Apparently there were specific intentions for this hijacking involving sailing to Israel and killing Israelis.  This proved impossible.  So instead they shot a disabled Jewish-American passenger named Leon Klinghoffer and threw his body into the sea.

Then John Adams and his librettist for Nixon in China, Alice Goodman, decided to do an opera on the subject.  It premiered in Brussels in 1991 and then played at the San Francisco Opera in 1992.  I attended one of these performances.  According to Wikipedia, "The concept of the opera originated with theatre director Peter Sellars, who was a major collaborator, as was the choreographer Mark Morris."  That's Peter Sellars of Don Giovanni as a drug addict and Doctor Atomic as a bomb hanging in the air.  I never get him.

Why write an opera about such a disgusting subject?  I generally feel that the fact that Palestinians don't receive more sympathy stems from the fact that they have absolutely no sense of PR.  We aren't going to feel sympathy for people who kill crippled old people and throw them into the sea.  Elevating a disgusting act to a performance subject just makes the perpetrators seem all the more disgusting, no matter how hard the creators of this work try to make it seem even handed. Perhaps they are trying to create PR where it has so obviously failed.

I can understand that the Klinghoffer family might not wish their father's death to turn into this ridiculous media circus, but never at any time did this opera make me feel sympathetic toward his killers.  If I go to an opera about the most disgusting public act of my lifetime, I would like for that opera to attempt to engender the nausea I naturally feel about it.  It didn't.  So my question is, if it completely fails in its attempt at even handedness, is it still antisemitic?  When I was watching it, I didn't feel this antisemitism.  For me it was mostly just boring.

Blogging

Nowadays I follow along on Facebook and Twitter to find out the singers' perspectives on the performance, and was surprised to see that a tray of cupcakes provided backstage at Dialogues of the Carmelites came with severed Barbie heads, here demonstrated by Meredith Arwady.  It took me rather too long to get this joke.

While I was away Peter Gelb cancelled the simulcast of The Death of Klinghoffer.  I feel that any comments I might make about this would probably be in bad taste.  The only acceptable excuse would be that donors threatened to withhold their donations, but I have not heard that this was the case.  When I saw this opera at its premier in San Francisco, I found it not nearly shocking enough.  It bothered me how matter-of-factly Mr. Klinghoffer was sent to his doom.  I haven't felt any desire to see it again, but thought I would because Szot was in it.  Here's what I said about this subject years ago:

"Next came Death of Klinghoffer which I saw in San Francisco. Is there even a prayer of making this live? The Klinghoffers would have to come alive for us, and they don’t. How can they? He was killed because he was Jewish and existed only as a symbol to the people who killed him. The symbol must become a person. Theater cannot be a newsreel—it cannot acquire its significance from outside sources. Because it meant something to us when we watched it on television doesn’t mean it will mean something as an opera. All the meaning must come from inside the work. Did I say that clearly enough? All the meaning must come from inside the work."

I try to remember to keep my mind open and receive each new performance as an entirely new experience.

Nixon

Me to seat mate at John Adams' Nixon in China dress rehearsal:  This is minimalism.
Seat mate:  I don't mind the minimalism, but do they have to play the same notes over and over?
Me:  That's what makes it minimalism.  [Pause]  This is actually a much shorter opera.

The only thing the Metropolitan Opera's Nixon in China and the San Francisco Opera's Nixon in China have in common is David Gockley, the original commissioner of the opera.  The conductor (Lawrence Renes), the production, the singers are all different.  The Met used the original production, but Gockley wanted something new.

Hye Jung Lee is the best Madame Mao ever.  She puts it out there, making the character the complete bitch you have always wished for.  In this version she appears in the last act with Mao.  I don't remember that happening before.

It is the words that make this opera completely extraordinary.  The Americans and the Chinese stand talking to one another, but it is clear that neither knows what the other is talking about.  All the memorable lines come from the Chinese.  "The people are the heroes now."  "Founders come first, then profiteers."  In fact, they seem to speak always in aphorisms.

The new production was not so literal and looked only approximately like the historical events.

The first two acts are terrific.  The third act is improved but still makes the opera peter out into dullness.  Mao dances.  I noticed that one section of the second act ballet sounds a little like Wagner.

This was a rehearsal, and the action completely stopped after Madame Mao's aria so the director could criticize a part of the scene.  To fill the time the orchestra played the ending of Das Rheingold.  I think they miss The Ring.

Nixon in China

In posting pictures for my review of the Live from the Metropolitan Opera in HD broadcast of John Adams' Nixon in China I have decided to go with reality instead of fiction.

The above picture from left is of Pat Nixon (sung by Janis Kelly), Richard Nixon (sung by James Maddalena) and Chou En-lai (sung by Russell Braun.)  My favorite line in this scene is when Nixon says to Chou, "As we flew in, we looked down at the ground.  'Brueghel,' Pat said."  I am always looking for things to look like something from a painting, and liked it that Pat might do the same.

The production has done a wonderful job of reproducing the look of the real people and places.  Below is Mao Tse-tung (sung by Robert Brubaker) in his actual study.  The chair and wall of papers look much like the set.

The scene in the opera of Nixon meeting Mao is definitely my favorite.  I had to search for quite a while to find a picture with everyone in it, except Pat, of course.  From left below are Chou, secretary, Mao, Nixon and Henry Kissinger (sung by Richard Paul Fink.)  In the opera the single secretary/translator is replaced by a trio of singers who repeat everything Mao says like a kind of sound halo.  Everyone says mysterious nonsensical things.  "Founders come first, then profiteers."  Kissinger declares that he is lost.

The events upon which this opera is based still lie in my memory, and they have omitted the part of the banquet where Nixon goes all around the room and toasts with everyone there one by one.  We just get Chou and Nixon toasting.

This is the real Madame Mao, Chiang Ch'ing (sung fabulously by Kathleen Kim).  Kathleen's Chiang was pretty frightening.

And this is a shot from the real Chinese ballet Red Detachment of Women.

Why bring back the real events?  To show how close they are visually to the opera.  So what is one to make of the fact that in the opera all the characters except Pat and Chou are really quite mad?  It's part of its charm.  Nixon comes off pretty lovable which I'm not at all sure he deserves.

The Kissinger part is a double role.  He also plays the Simon Legree character in the play within the opera.  In his interview Richard Paul Fink said that when working with dancers, it's necessary to stay out of their way.  Not to hurt them.  It was a very physical part for an opera role.

I love Nixon in China.  I love the minimalist idiom which always enhances the action.  I love the "I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung" aria.  I love the incomprehensible philosophy always lurking in the background.  I could live entirely without the hand job in the last scene.  In fact the whole last scene is extremely anticlimactic.

It was said several times that this is a modern masterpiece, and I am almost persuaded.  The people being interviewed were pleased to be performing this opera on the day after the Revolution in Cairo.  They made Mao and Chou seem to realize that revolution is only for a moment, like life generally.

John Adams conducted his own opera.

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Singing in the Twentieth Century

Styles of singing split into two branches in the twentieth century.

The heavy style of Wagner and Puccini continued throughout the century, tapering off only toward the end. Evidence of this can be found in the concerts hosted by the Richard Tucker Music Foundation which always feature heavy singers. (Curiously, this is this evening and features James Valenti as the 2010 Richard Tucker Award Winner. From San Francisco Leah Crocetto is a grant recipient. She is by far the heaviest woman’s voice among the Adler Fellows.)

Then came Expressionism and Arnold Schoenberg. Here is a bit from Erwartung (1909).



There is a lot of shouting in this short example. Schoenberg is sort of the anti-Wagner. Where Wagner is a sea of tonality with almost constant modulating, Schoenberg carefully avoids establishing a key, and therefore cannot modulate away from it. Wagner is still about singing. His roots are firmly in the operatic world. In Schoenberg we have returned to the world of the monodists. The singing is there solely to support the drama. This is the attitude of all the modernists.

This is a nice bit from Lulu (1979 version) "O Freiheit."


The goal for the singer is to get out of it alive. It may be important to know that Anna Netrebko's manager won't let her sing Lulu, though she would like to.

Modernism requires a narrow piercing sound rather than a large round one. Because established singers are reluctant to perform this repertoire, it can provide an opportunity for young singers. Marilyn Horne made her San Francisco Opera debut as Marie in Wozzeck.

With heavy Wagner/verismo singing the danger lies in over-singing, in pushing the voice to produce beyond its natural capacity. The danger in modern singing lies in never really establishing a proper legato. I must say Marilyn produced the most legato Marie I've ever heard. It is possible to sing Berg and not destroy yourself.

Here is a personal favorite from Nixon in China (1987) "I am the wife of Mao Zedong."



How can you not love this?  Kathleen Kim who sang in Tales of Hoffmann is doing it on this season's simulcast.

It is important to know that there is no particular style associated with modern music.  Stravinsky for one deeply resented even the suggestion that there was more in the music than was written on the page.  Any singer will tell you there is always much much more.

No Suspense

Here is an excellent article pointing out the complete lack of suspense in Doctor Atomic. I couldn't agree more.

Why I walked out on Dr. Atomic

This guy has a lot to say. I admit I wasn't able to get this worked up over Dr. Atomic that I wanted to write that much about it. It is a little less boring than the SF version, but still pretty boring. I stayed to the end just to see if it was different.

I still think Peter Sellars is a smooth talking idiot.

Doctor Atomic Revisited

Edward Teller...........Richard Paul Fink
J. Robert Oppenheimer...Gerald Finley
Robert Wilson...........Thomas Glenn
Kitty Oppenheimer.......Sasha Cooke
General Leslie Groves...Eric Owens
Frank Hubbard...........Earle Patriarco
Captain James Nolan.....Roger Honeywell
Pasqualita..............Meredith Arwady

Conductor...............Alan Gilbert
Production..............Penny Woolcock

I panned Doctor Atomic when I first saw it in San Francisco. I hated the fact that a bomb hanging in the air seemed to be all it was about. Even more I hated the emptiness of the second act. The SF production was by Peter Sellars.

Sellars is also the librettist for Doctor Atomic, and he and John Adams have worked over the second act considerably. People keep talking practically to the end now.

The Metropolitan Opera production, by Penny Woolcock, is far more interesting. There's still a bomb hanging in the air, but it is tucked back out of the way except when referred to. She kept people in proximity who might be supposed to be talking to one another--what a concept. The actors waiting for the blast, the "cloud flower," put on their dark glasses, and at the end there is a white flash of light, followed by the sound of someone speaking in Japanese asking for water. There is a definite sense of having reached the end of the opera, something completely missing in the version put on in San Francisco.

I think the closeups of the HD broadcast also helped make the opera dramatically more interesting. Video design was by Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer. Alan Gilbert, an American and the new conductor of the New York Philharmonic, ably conducted.

Gerald Finley who sang Dr. Oppenheimer did not take any bows, unless I was so distracted I completely missed them. I remember Sasha Cooke who sang Kitty (very nice), followed by John Adams, followed by nothing. Finley would have come between them, I would have thought. I thought this represented an excess of self-criticism. He was not in ideal voice but sounded fine. The role is not easy to sing. I recommend that he drop it from his repertoire.

I liked very much the Pasqualita of Meredith Arwady. I always watch for Thomas Glenn who sang Robert Wilson again. No one is going to make their career from singing in Doctor Atomic, but in general the singing was enjoyable, with lots of pleasant coloratura, especially for Kitty and Pasqualita.

I took away the impression that the entire staff at Los Alamos was slightly wacky. Edward Teller has long been a personal favorite for general insanity. The opera is an improvement over the San Francisco version, but I feel like I've seen it enough. Is it a great opera? It has edged toward being an opera at all, but not far. No amount of beefing up the parts of Mrs. Oppenheimer and her maid will make this a chick flick. A real opera on this subject would be about extramarital sex at Los Alamos. It's better, but it's still pretty much a yawner.

Disturbing comment by John Adams in the intermission: Dr. Oppenheimer was more cultured than Aristotle. Huh? I don't know that cultured is precisely the word I would have used to describe Aristotle.
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Tirade

I bought a New York Times this morning and was annoyed to read Tommasini’s article on new operas. I couldn’t disagree more.

I thought that Doctor Atomic had not one minute of interesting vocal writing and even less of theatrical viability. Musically it was quite nice, though I might hear it differently today. I notice increasingly Adams’ minimalist tendencies, something I have no problem with. It’s the lack of a real libretto that I don’t like.

So why has Satyagraha not the same effect on me? It has a similar lack of theatrical viability and yet does not bother me at all. With Glass there is the expectation of boredom. One anticipates being numbed into submission. Adams has not created the same expectation. He began his operatic career with a highly viable theatrical vehicle--Nixon in China—with real dramatic tension and at least one real opera aria. Expectation undoubtedly plays a role. I was glad when he made a symphony of Doctor Atomic. Much more suitable.

So now Tommasini wants to attack my favorite thing about Bonesetter—the writing for female trio. He does this by pointing out how critical the trio in Rosenkavalier is to the plot. No it isn’t. It’s critical to the need for a big vocal moment. Strauss understood precisely what an opera was, how one worked dramatically, and most important of all how one worked musically. He understood the purpose of singing in the drama, where the arias went and why. The climax of Rosenkavalier involves 3 people, so all three have to sing.

I didn’t read Tam’s novel and am not sorry. I came to Bonesetter with no preconceived ideas. Do I think it’s as good as Rosenkavalier? Hell, no. Do I think anything is as good as Rosenkavalier? Hell, no. I thought the trios made the story about three characters, and that it needed that. I bought the theatrical solutions to the staging of the novel. For me it worked.

I don’t think Wallace is as good a composer as Adams. Tommasini was right in pointing out the flaw in Wallace not being able to imagine the sound for Bonesetter. Verdi didn’t sit around thinking of a sound. Wagner didn’t either—or if he did, he seems to have done it only once for his whole career. Strauss didn’t either. Mozart didn’t either. Any composer worth shit looks to their own sound for the musical materials, and they know what that sound is. The problem with most modern composers is that they have technique to burn but absolutely no characteristic sound. This is one of the reasons for the popularity of Philip Glass. He makes you crazy on occasion—though I seem to be getting over this reaction—but you always know who he is.

I think all three have to sing together in Bonesetter. It doesn’t work without it. For me it was vastly superior theatrically to Atomic, an opera about a bomb hanging in the air. Maybe the new production will help me change my mind, but for me Atomic lacked theatrical viability. At no time do any two characters actually talk to each other. The countdown that lasts through the whole last act completely did not work. I could go on and on.

Mrs Atomic asks over and over “Am I in your light?” Could he just turn around and say, “No, for god’s sake. The light is coming from the other side, as anyone can plainly see.”

Recommendations

Gramophone recommends a list of instrumental CDs you should buy so you can get familiar with the new composers. I would like to make some different recommendations.


Rent the movie Koyaanisqatsi to hear Philip Glass's score.


Or try Dawn Upshaw's recording of Ayre by Golijov.


Jump into Arvo Pärt's Passio.


Get deeper into Golijov with his St. Mark Passion.


Mr. and Mrs. Lieberson are both excellent together in the Neruda Songs.

Do modern operas.

Start with John Adams' Nixon in China.


Then move on to L'Amour de Loin.


And for the definitive Philip Glass experience what better than Einstein on the Beach? Don't keep any sharp objects in the vicinity.

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El Niño

My local public library has a few opera dvds, and among them I found a film of John Adams El Niño. I was interested in this because it is the Adams opera that immediately preceded Doctor Atomic. The presentation was in 2000 in Paris with Kent Nagano as the conductor. El Niño means the boy in Spanish.

The cast consists of the ubiquitous Dawn Upshaw (does anyone try to do a modern opera these days without Dawn Upshaw?), Willard White (Saint Francis in my memory) and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (my other reason for checking it out.)

It is called an opera in this video. Elsewhere it has been called a nativity oratorio. Everyone is dressed casually. Ms Upshaw is wearing a plaid shirt, for instance. It is simply a retelling of the nativity from Mary's viewpoint with texts from the Bible, carols, something called the Gospel of James, Luther's Christmas sermon, Hildegard von Bingen, etc.

Don't buy this video. It's completely unwatchable. I am not a member of the MTV generation, and I don't care to have tiny fragments of video which are flashed on the screen and replaced by other tiny fragments of video. This is crap. I think in the theater the performers were in the foreground while a film played simultaneously in the background, but here they just cut back and forth. It's horrible. In fact the whole gimmick is wearing thin for me. I liked the human parts of the annunciation and would have liked them even more if they would just stay on the screen.

The music is supposed to be good for Adams. I don't know. Maybe if I play it without looking, it would be ok. Am I the only one who is getting tired of Peter Sellars, the aging wunderkind of opera? The very stark and abstract La Traviata I liked so much was blessed with a complete lack of distractions. We have a clock face that generally does nothing, a man that just stands around doing nothing and a white stage. No films. No gimmicks. Just people singing and acting. It doesn't get better than this. I want the opera to be about the opera.

Every opera stage isn't populated with the marvelous actors in the Traviata video. Too bad. Nevertheless, I'm never sitting there thinking we should switch away to a film. We're working up the theory that people staging operas today don't really like opera. Have you ever seen any work by Peter Sellars where he wasn't the main thing going on? No, thank you.
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Robert Oppenheimer

Was I too rough with Doctor Atomic? I don't think so.

I quoted Gertrude Stein on the atomic bomb because I agree with her perspective. Politically the bomb is a huge issue, but personally it is not interesting.

For Robert Oppenheimer to work as Faust the opera has to be about him. The Faust moment for him came when he agreed to head the Manhattan Project, an event not covered in the opera at all. Over the course of his employment on the project, did he doubt its wisdom or his own role in it? He had US security clearance and would have found himself in trouble if he expressed a lot of reservations. A librettist would need to invent this.

If Robert Oppenheimer experienced no inner conflict around the work he was doing, then he is a poor choice for an opera. A big bomb hanging in the air is not a substitute. This Faust loses his soul and is damned forever.

Stein on the Atom Bomb

Gertrude Stein, "Reflections on the Atomic Bomb" (1946)

They asked me what I thought of the atomic bomb. I said I had not been able to take any interest in it.
I like to read detective and mystery stories. I never get enough of them but whenever one of them is or was about death rays and atomic bombs I never could read them. What is the use, if they are really as destructive as all that there is nothing left and if there is nothing there nobody to be interedted and nothing to be interested about. If they are not as destructive as all that then they are just a little more or less destructive than other things and that means that in spite of all destruction there are always lots left on this earth to be interested or to be willing and the thing that destroys is just one of the things that concerns the people inventing it or the people starting it off, but really nobody else can do anything about it so you have to just live along like always, so you see the atomic [bomb] is not at all interesting, not any more interesting than any other machine, and machines are only interesting in being invented or in what they do, so why be interested. I never could take any interest in the atomic bomb, I just couldn't any more than in everybody's secret weapon. That it has to be secret makes it dull and meaningless. Sure it will destroy a lot and kill a lot, but it's the living that are interesting not the way of killing them, because if there were not a lot left living how could there be any interest in destruction. Alright, that is the way I feel about it. They think they are interested about the atomic bomb but they really are not not any more than I am. Really not. They may be a little scared, I am not so scared, there is so much to be scared of so what is the use of bothering to be scared, and if you are not scared the atomic bomb is not interesting. Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. They listen so much that they forget to be natural. This is a nice story.


Gertrude Stein, 1946

Doctor Atomic

Doctor Atomic at the San Francisco Opera is part of Pamela Rosenberg's Faust project. The Faust project included a fully staged Damnation of Faust, Berlioz' insufficiently theatrical opera. For me it was very successful, bringing coherence where it had not been before.

The Faust project also included Busoni's Doktor Faust which I loathed. It was set in what appeared to be a factory. Or was it a power plant? Faust's significance seemed to be indistinguishable from Homer Simpson's job at the power plant. People came and went for no apparent reason. There was an ending, but who knows what it meant? I expect the production to explain the opera to me, but this one explained nothing.

Faust is always a well-educated man who wants to experience more than ordinary human experience allows. J. Robert Oppenheimer wants to experience the creation of a nuclear explosion, an activity previously outside human experience. Has he sold his soul to accomplish this? Has this process shown him that he has a soul?

I said that I would review this work as opera and not as politics. In order to do this I would first need to convince myself that it existed apart from politics. Adams' libretti are not really operas and I think this one is the worst offender. Is there drama here at all? The bomb is ready to go off, and everyone is fretting over it. We are transitioning from a world without nuclear explosions to one with them. The wife, Kitty, sung by Kristine Jepson, who is entirely outside the project, thinks we should aggressively pursue peace. One of the scientists, Robert Wilson, ably played by the Adler Fellow Thomas Glenn, is worried about the morality of the proposed bombing of Japan, which they all seem to know about.

The supposed bomb, looking nothing like the actual atomic bomb which was not particularly interesting looking, hangs from the ceiling throughout the opera, reminding us constantly of what the subject is.

For me this simply did not work. There were sufficient events to fill the first act, but the second act is empty. There is ticking to indicate a count down, but there is no number to tell us where we are, no sense of progress toward the end. The lighting changes. The people stand or lie on the stage. The colors change--I'm told each of these colors is assigned a particular significance, but do I care? What little tension there may have been entirely dissipates by the end. Nothing happens except the lights go out, the chorus stands and the lights come back up. This entire act created no tension for me at all, and I'm told that the ending was changed from the opening on October 1 to be even less eventful.

John Adams' music is the best part of this. There is homage to Verese, someone I enjoy, in the mechanical sounds that make up the overture and parts of Act II. It's minimalism in every sense. Adams is less minimal than Glass by quite a lot, but there is lots of harmonic, thematic and rhythmic repetition. Minimalism is based firmly in the concept that less is more. Less complexity brings greater comprehension and appreciation, and after Schoenberg, this is welcomed. But less theatrical arc does not yield more theatrical satisfaction. I need something going on. I'm sorry to say it, but this opera is just plain boring.

The texts all appear to be borrowed. There are frequent elements that could have been formed into a plot. The scientists could have actively fought over the ethics of bombing a Japanese city with no warning instead of just doing monologues. There was singing, movement, people, lighting, music. For me all that was missing was the opera.