09.30.05 (AP) Standing beneath the world's first atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer falls to his knees as he sings the words of the poet John Donne: "Batter my heart, three-personed God." Brilliant spotlights throw bomb and physicist into stark relief. The music mounts as Oppenheimer lurches toward the dark silhouette, drawn inexorably to the thrilling, terrible object he and his colleagues have created. This is "Doctor Atomic," the SAN FRANCISCO OPERA's ambitious new work that captures the inner struggle of those who raised the curtain on the nuclear age. "Historically, we all know what happened. What we don't all know is what actually led up to the first detonation in Los Alamos," says Donald Runnicles, SFO music director and conductor of the new work. "Doctor Atomic," which opens Saturday, is a collaboration between Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams and Peter Sellars, who wrote the libretto and directs. It takes place on the eve of the Trinity test, the July 1945 detonation of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. The force unchained that night would ultimately kill more than 120,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also brought World War II - and Allied casualties - to an abrupt end. Oppenheimer, top civilian on the Manhattan Project that developed the bombs, is the main character, as portrayed by baritone Gerald Finley. Mezzo-soprano Kristine Jepson is Oppenheimer's wife, Kitty, and mezzo Beth Clayton plays the Oppenheimers' maid, Pasqualita. Other cast members include baritone Richard Paul Fink as scientist Edward Teller and bass Eric Owens as General Leslie Groves. For the sets, designer Adrianne Lobel uses a mountain-like backdrop to evoke the desert's barren grandeur; trussed woodwork represents the tower from which the bomb was detonated. For much of the opera, the 460-pound bomb replica - big, round and festooned with tubing - is suspended over the stage, a palpable presence. "This weapon has been created not by the devilish inspiration of some warped genius," the chorus sings in the opening act, "but by the arduous labor of thousands of normal men and women working for the safety of their country." Adams, composer of the operas "The Death Of Klinghoffer" and "Nixon In China," has blended the mechanical with the musical, punctuating his score with the whir of power tools, snippets of authentic wartime radio broadcasts and the rumble of military vehicles. Lighting adds to the intensity, with the stage bathed in searing red-orange as the chorus - nurses, soldiers and civilian workers - sings of the bomb's power. The explosion, when it finally comes, is a drawn-out scream of sound as the stage is bathed in radioactive green. The cast, who have all thrown themselves prone, slowly look up, gape-mouthed expressions faintly illuminated as they stare over the heads of the audience. Then there is only the soft voice of a woman speaking Japanese - taped testimony from a Hiroshima survivor. The libretto is based on a number of resources, including published memoirs and government documents. "There is no enormous artistic license at work here," says Runnicles. "It is very much up to the audience to take all of this information that is disseminated during this remarkable work and to draw their own conclusions."

09.23.05 (MusicPortal.com) After a chilly excursion into the artscape, Iceland's SIGUR ROS have come in from the cold to talk about their latest release, "Takk...." "There is nothing clever about Sigur Ros and how we write songs, it's just mucking about really. It's all very spontaneous," says SIGUR ROS keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson. Easy for him to say - most musicians could muck about for millennia and never come up with anything even remotely approaching the elegance and depth of "Takk...," the fourth album from Iceland's glacially cool Art Rock quartet. In Iceland, "Takk" translates to a simple "thanks" - which begs the question: What are SIGUR ROS thanking us for? Perhaps it's for sticking by them during what for many fans has been the band's baffling excursion into the far-distant realms of sonic art. In 2002, SIGUR ROS confounded admirers of their breakthrough LP, "Agaetis Byrjun," (voted by the UK's Q Magazine as "the last great record of the 20th century") with a grimly atmospheric third album, "( )," a chilly compendium of titleless songs that sold over 600,000 copies but one suspects is not often played by people in a positive frame of mind. Writing music for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, The Danish Royal Ballet, and composing a 70-minute orchestral work called "Odin's Raven Magic" didn't exactly enhance their reputation for easy listening, either. Looking back, the members of SIGUR ROS see "( )" as a retreat from the intense heat generated by their success. In the time between "Agaetis Byrjun"'s appearance in Iceland and its final release in Japan, the group toured relentlessly for three years. "( )" simply reflected their mindset. It was also a struggle to record, with the band chasing live-sounding versions of its darkest soundscapes in their newly built recording studio, a converted swimming pool 10 kilometers outside of Reykjavik. "This album sounds much more optimistic than the previous one," says Kjartan Sveinsson. "When we were doing the previous one, there was so much going on you know with us, as a band and as people. Things were going quite fast, and we were really tired. After we did 'Agaetis Byrjun,' everything went so fast - signing record deals and meeting all these new people in different countries. It was a scary thing really. (With) this album we had more time just to play around in the studio." "'Agaetis Byrjun' is sort of like a fairytale record and we really enjoyed (making) that," adds SIGUR ROS bassist Georg Holm. "But the last record was more like a Grimm fairytale -- very dark. So, yeah, I think we wanted to do it again, because it feels happy. I think we were a bit sick of this depression." A 65-minute suite of 11 linked pieces, "Takk..." came together relatively quickly, with recording starting in earnest in December of 2004 and mixing completed just six months later. According to the band -- with Icelandic tongue firmly wedged in Icelandic cheek -- "This is our rock 'n' roll album." True, on occasion they play loud and fast, but few of the cliches of the Rock genre emerge recognizably intact after being filtered through SIGUR ROS.
[WATCH]

[Classical News: July 2005]