RED SUN, BLACK BOMB

In contrast to the crimson red sun of the Japanese flag, director and librettist Peter Sellers frames the silhouette of the 'fat man' Atomic bomb like a Death Star-like black planet against a white tent screen in John Adams's opera 'Doctor Atomic' in his 2007 production for the Dutch National Opera.

Oppenheimer (Gerald Finley) stands on the brink of a portal into the unknown infinite of global and cosmic possibilities and implications as he hesitates, trepidacious before the deathly orb suspended above him as the blinding white light of the future spills through the crude split opening of the tent screen just like the atom.

Adams himself has described Doctor Atomic as a 'modern Faust' opera and this scene exemplifies this statement perfectly as the director of the Manhattan Project wrestles with this point of no return; for once he passes through the white tent and commits to action, stepping into the abyss of both his and the world's seismic shift toward nuclear destruction, an irreversible moment of karma and world history entwined, things will never be the same again.

The physicist, a lover of poetry and especially fond of the poems of John Donne, is seen at this decisive moment quoting the Holy Sonnet: "Batter My Heart, Three-Person'd God."

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

It is a moment that only opera can capture, combining a fusion of poetry, music and staging that re-creates this fever dream of invention to such an extent that you feel as if you're living in that eerie and defining moment of history alongside Oppenheimer himself.

Given the budget for Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer' (2023), I find there is something exquisite about the zen-like simplicity of Seller's white tent screen and black silhouette. It epitomizes the elegant genius of humanity's ingenuity far more than throwing 100 million plus dollars at a cinematic reconstruction.

For more often than not, small can be just as powerful and devastating as  Oppenheimer and his team so well proved with the 'little boy' loaded up at Enola Gay's bomb bay, the elegant sequel to the original test 'fat boy' bomb designed and constructed at Los Alamos.