If Doctor Atomic is a tragedy of immense and august proportions, it is also a powerful love story, and an erotic current runs parallel to the struggles of the scientists to succeed in creating an atomic bomb. If tragedy is, in essence, about our relationship to the warping of our moral compass, understood as a form of death, or thanatos, tragedy does not exist in a void and is meaningless without its relationship to eros, or the life force, and the dance of eros and thanatos is like the twinning of our DNA. The opera, with music by John Adams and libretto by Peter Sellars, who is also the director of this production, is rooted in the origins of tragedy in ancient Greek theater-with its invention of the chorus that functions as a medium of human awareness and an omniscient commentator on the follies of mankind, just as the chorus of Doctor Atomic does. Doctor Atomic embraces a tragedy that the world has been doing its best and its worst to cope with for seventy-three years. The seriousness of the moment, when the transformation of matter into energy becomes more than hypothetical calculations on a page, clouds the unfolding of the narrative without letup. Although there are some moments of levity in Doctor Atomic, they are few and far between the escalation of tensions that proves to be one fulcrum of the work. The libretto, the music-the tableaux of singers, dancers, scenes, and the one prop that never ceases to cast its shadow on the whole-press down on the audience right from the start. Photo: Ken Howard.Ī tragic awareness haunts every element of the opera Doctor Atomic. Ryan McKinny (Robert Oppenheimer) and the Santa Fe Opera chorus, still from Doctor Atomic, 2018. Contemporary Aesthetics Renew Debussy’s Mystifying Pelléas et Mélisande at the Santa Fe Opera.Manual Cinema Presents a Thrilling Multimedia Performance of Frankenstein.Say Their Names: Artists Reflect on Nuclear Injustice in New Mexico.I Am Not Your Mexican Expands Post-Minimal Boundaries.Artists Allege Censorship After Exhibitions Postponed at Mesa Contemporary Arts.Rafael Fajardo Turns Border Issues into Video Games.Southwest Superfoods: Justin Favela and Working Classroom Celebrate New Mexico’s Culinary Heritage.Karma Henry: 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now 2023.Kate Turner: 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now 2023.Benjamin Winans: 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now 2023.One on One: Sean Sheehan of Sheehan Winery.Support Santa Fe Gift Guide: Food + Drink Edition.Hops in the Desert: Bow & Arrow Brewing Co.The Fight to Save Kimball’s Peak Three, Colorado Springs’s Only Independent Movie Theater.Bearing Witness: Danny Lyon’s Journey West Highlighted in Albuquerque.Goodnight Noises Everywhere: Rachel Rose at SITE Santa Fe.Summer Orr: The Water Witch of the West.Los Bares Viejos: A Guide to the Good Old Dives of Nuevo México.Marvelous Green Encounters: The Poetry and Anthropology of Nathaniel Tarn.These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things to Read in 2022.Tommy Archuleta, a Poet and Mental Health Therapist for the New Mexico Corrections Department, Talks Grief and the Ineffable.
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