Dr. Atomic

Last Monday night I attended a campus forum, “Science and the Soul: J. Robert Oppenheimer and Dr. Atomic.” Dr. Atomic is the new opera premiering this weekend by John Adams and Peter Sellars. While I profess to know little about the intricacies and significance of this work as a musical achievement (I will leave that argument to Nicki and Justin) I was fascinated by the forum that featured Adams and Sellars in conversation (or dialogue if you will) with a renowned Berkeley physicist, Marvin Cohen. The opera takes place in the hours before the summer 1945 atomic tests in the New Mexico desert. As the bomb tests are postponed a few hours due to an electrical storm, Oppenheimer is depicted asking all the ethical questions about the bomb that he did not have time for when the test was on schedule. Sellars, who I now completely admire, spoke of how he hoped the opera “made space” for the alternatives that have seemed less possible since the bombs were tested. Science, specifically how atomic technology could be utilized for political ends became the dominant paradigm, and Sellars believe his new opera and arts in general offer alternatives to the era of nuclear proliferation we find ourselves in.

For me, this forum embodied what I see as pragmatic possibility. A conversation among disciplines, the pinnacle of the purpose of the liberal arts education. Arts in this case stands in for the usual counter to science, religion or spirituality. Dr. Atomic shows how science and the arts can work together and produce more viable options then possible when disciplines work alone.