"I explained that the visual effect of an atomic bombing would be tremendous." -- J. Robert Oppenheimer, via Peter SellarsI spent yesterday evening in the highest balcony of the Metropolitan Opera House to see the closing-night performance of
Doctor Atomic, a new John Adams/Peter Sellars opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, the days leading up to the first test shot of the atomic bomb, and the conflicting emotions of the scientists involved in its creation. As a woman with a little opera training and a lot of scientific training, I was ecstatic to see two of my passions merge on stage. Of course, since I was headed to the world's most renowned opera house to see a production composed by an ultra-modern, minimalistic visionary, I didn't expect much nuclear physics to be involved in the production.
Thus, I was genuinely surprised to enter the house and face a white-on-black projection of the Periodic Table of the Elements rather than the usual heavy damask curtain. I examined the familiar grid as I settled into my seat, but something didn't feel right about it. It eventually dawned on me that a few elements -- and the entire actinoid series -- were missing:
My companion, a chemist, deduced that the scrim showed the Periodic Table as it looked during the summer of 1945. We picked over the projection, noted what was there and what has been discovered since, became increasingly aware of the knowledge base of the scientists and engineers we were about to meet. When the house lights dimmed, we were already immersed in a singular moment in time, in an era of science before the discovery of francium and promethium, before the threat of nukes hovered over every war, before E=mc^2 was proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Then the curtain rose and the neat grid of boxes was replaced by... a neat grid of boxes. Forty-two boxes to be specific, stacked three high and fourteen across, each covered by a screen bearing the ID card photograph of a Trinity Project scientist. The photos were creased and faded and covered in cellophane tape. Some names were typed, others handwritten, some misspelled and crossed out and re-inked. The names were difficult to read from my vantage point, but Richard Feynman, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, I. I. Rabi, Niels Bohr, Robert R. Wilson, Edwin McMillan... they were all there. The men who dedicated their lives to stretching the boundaries of human thought were each identically posed and encased in an identical little box.
The photographs then rose to reveal forty-two cast members dressed as scientists, one in each cubicle, each armed with a piece of chalk, each madly scribbling unknown equations on the back wall. Over the next three and a half hours, some of them break free from their confines to express human emotion -- Oppenheimer, our Doctor Atomic, takes center stage and becomes almost Faustian in his efforts to balance his dedication to the bomb and his fear of its potential -- but, for the most part, the scientists remain spaces on a grid, insignificant parts of a significant whole.
Ultimately, the opera about nuclear physics becomes an opera about dozens of brilliant innovators who surrender their individual identities to accomplish something for their country. And that opera ultimately becomes an opera about scientists being forced to choose between doing what they know is right for their own edification and doing what they know is right for humanity.
During intermission, I said to my companion, "I've never been so proud to be a scientist, but I've also never been so ashamed to be a scientist." That's because, shortly before the curtain fell on the First Act, when the glowing wire-covered bomb rose away from Oppenheimer to cast a vaguely spherical shadow over half the stage, I realized that, if fate had somehow landed me and my engineering skills at Los Alamos in 1945, I would have made the same choice that Oppenheimer did. Despite being surrounded by discussion of Japanese target cities, possible ignition of Earth's atmosphere, and a new age of destructive power, I would have used every skill I possessed to get "the gadget" working properly. Just because I
could.
The opera ends at t-minus-one second, but that one second is stretched into ten minutes of orchestral cacophony that nearly shakes the house with its intensity. The entire cast is bunkered down on stage, unmoving, staring wordlessly into at the audience as the scenery warps behind them. The audience never sees the explosion, but for a brief moment just before the curtain fell, I felt like the bomb.
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