Go Read Some Terry

Terry Teachout on John Adams, Dr. Atomic and his own opera-in-progress, The Letter:

Most critics have been lukewarm at best about Sellars' libretto, and some wrote quite sharply about it. But music critics, even those who cover opera regularly, tend not to think in specifically stage-oriented terms, and I haven't read any reviews of the opera that cut to what I suspect was the heart of the matter, which is that Doctor Atomic, at least on paper, sounds more like an oratorio than an opera.

In works like Handel's Messiah or Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, which are specifically intended for the concert hall rather than the stage, the singers and chorus describe and comment on dramatic situations rather than enacting them. From time to time opera companies attempt to put such essentially static works on stage--the Metropolitan Opera recently did just that with Berlioz's Damnation of Faust--but these presentations usually end up amounting to little more than a series of visually striking tableaus accompanied by music. The results may be interesting to look at, but they don't move. 

He also talks at some length about what Adams and Sellars were trying to accomplish with the libretto.  I wish Terry had seen Dr. Atomic because then we could talk about whether or not they were successful in "retell[ing] the Faust myth in specifically American terms, with J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who directed the research-and-development program that led to the building of the first atomic bomb, cast in the role of the all-too-human genius who sells his soul and lives to regret it." Because the issue for me is that the libretto fails even on its on terms.  It doesn't touch the mytho-poetic except when it's actually quoting poetry, and it frequently runs aground on odd, mundane tangents about weather reports, and dieting regiments.   

Anyway... RTWT here. He also links to a story called "Why I Walked Out Of Dr. Atomic" in Slate, of all places.

One thing I will say about Dr. Atomic is that its ending on a writing level (including libretto) is kind of ingenious and so angered an elderly gentlemen sitting two rows in front of us that he audibly scoffed.  

Comments

[Scott Walters]

Well, if an old gentleman audibly scoffed, then it must be doing something right, right? Epater le ancien regime, no?

[isaac butler]

That's not what i was saying.