Even thought I am steeply entrenched and enamored of all things pop and modern, I have a background in classical music. This dichotomy is what simultaneously drew me like moth to flame to last night's world premiere performance of the opera Doctor Atomic, and repulsed me afterward.
Doctor Atomic is set in the moments leading up to the first test of an atomic bomb, on July 16th, 1945, in the New Mexico desert. The major star character is inexplicably Oppenheimer's stay-at-home wife, fretting about her husband and the fate of the planet while strolling around the crib of her baby. Alone. For a loooooooooong time. There is only one scene with the two of them together. They are in bed, and no sex is happening - just two opera stars singing unimportant music.
There were only two interesting things to learn from this opera about about the entire series of events leading up to the explosion. One was a thunderstorm that night that threatened to detonate the bomb prematurely, and the drama around the weather was the highlight of the opera. The flashing lights & loud tympani with driving orchestral rhythms were the pinnacle of both the technical effects and the music. The second was that the Nobel Prize physicist Enrico Fermi was running a betting pool among the team as to whether or not the explosion would ignite the Earth's atmosphere, causing a chain reaction that would blow up the core of our planet. This could have been a comedic and dramatic highlight, had they chosen to sing about it for more than 3 minutes.
The second half consisted of three scenes, one of them focusing on Oppenheimer's wife (the aforementioned strolling around and around the crib), and one focusing on the Native American nanny of the baby and some interpretive dancers. Let it be known that it's never, ever a good thing when the entire action of your opera's second half is based upon the phrase "interpretive dancing." Two-thirds of the second half about an opera committed to the Trinity explosion is focused on Oppenheimer's WIFE and his NANNY? Seriously?!
Is there truly no sense of audience in modern opera today? The sets could have been a spectacle. While the sets were large-scale, they were neither impressive nor effective, even from a minimalist perspective. There's a bomb, eventually suspended on a minimal framework representing the base of the tower it's exploded on. There's two small consoles with lights on it, and an onstage spotlight. There's three tables with foam models simulating core experiments by the physicists. There's Oppenheimer's bed and his baby's crib (with the plastic baby in it). And 8 suspended poles that dancers move on & off the stage. That's it. There was no background - only a blank background that lights up different colors. If there was ever an opera set screaming out for the genius touch of Catherine Martin, Oscar-winning set designer and wife of Baz Luhrman, this was it.
How monotonous was the second half? Scores of people around me were using it as naptime. I subcumbed to 15-20 minutes of sleep. According to the program notes, I missed no plot points in that 20 minutes. We are people who *chose* (and paid) to spend their Saturday evening at a modern opera. Many were younger than my thirty-something self. We were the ticket-paying audience this opera was targeted to, the young professionals willing to pay $40 for a nose-bleed seat, but unwilling to commit the $105 to sit one balcony down, much less $210 for floor seats.
The opera ends with the initial test explosion in the New Mexico desert at a remote section of Alamogordo Air Base. What could be a bigger bang for your opera end than a nuclear explosion? Except, oh, they never attempt to SHOW this. Over 50 chorus members and dancers are lying face-down on a bare floor, simulating the staff in the trenches moments before the explosion, singing into the floor. For 15 minutes. A cool effect for like, 3 minutes, but hardly a climax to a new opera you want well-reviewed for people to purchase tickets for future performances, or other opera companies to finance a production.
Classical music suffers from a strange dichotomy - making a popular work, or making an important work. In most art forms today, the two are usually connected, and in the most vibrant forms (pop music, hip-hop, movies), interconnected. People attend landmark movies and purchase landmark albums. In classical music, and specifically in opera, never have the two been farther apart than last night, since Doctor Atomic is the most anticipated new opera premiere this decade.
Opera started & flourished as a popular media form. In the 19th century, Verdi & Wagner perfected the dramatic operas, Rossini the comedic end of the spectrum. Mozart's operas, and Beethoven's Fidelio set the table for this rise. But more and more, modern opera becomes a marathon of monotony involving bad pseudo-drama, zero comedy, and unpopular, untuneful music resulting in no audience connection. It achieves neither significance nor popularity, even though producing a new opera is probably a larger financial risk than producing a new Broadway musical.
The biggest thing today an opera company can do to establish itself is to produce a showing of the 4 Wagner operas known as The Ring Cycle. Wagner died over a century ago.
The next biggest thing an opera company can do is produce a major world premiere opera. San Francisco Opera did that last night, and John Adams & Peter Sellers came through with an absolute, and literal, snoozer. I applauded loudly for the effort and attempt, but refused to stand, as 95% of my balcony-mates refused, for an ovation.
