If you believe outsized events are the ones that lend themselves most auspiciously to magnum-opus treatments, then it takes little imagination to understand why composer John Adams jumped at the chance to create
Doctor Atomic, now making its belated New York debut at the Metropolitan Opera.

First commissioned by the San Francisco Opera, this probing work is about J. Robert Oppenheimer (Gerald Finley in muscular and almost consistently anguished mode and wielding an ever-present cigarette), the central figure behind building the first atomic bomb. The opera, which features a libretto by Peter Sellars derived in part from Oppenheimer's and his colleagues' writings and recorded comments, tur[...]