The bomb is ticking. The orchestra is screaming. Oppenheimer's conscience has never sounded this devastating.
John Adams’s mesmerizing score, in the powerful production of Penny Woolcock, tells the story of one of the pivotal moments in human history—the creation of the atomic bomb. Conducted by Alan Gilbert in his Met debut, this gripping opera presents the human face of the scientists, military men, and others who were involved in the project, as they wrestled with the implications of their work. Baritone Gerald Finley gives a powerful star turn in the title role as the brilliant J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Score
Adams's minimalist dread builds like actual radiation poisoning.
Acting
Finley's Oppenheimer: intellect so vast it crushes him from within.
Direction
Woolcock makes physics equations feel like prayers before execution.
Director
Gary Halvorson
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Adams wrote Oppenheimer's pivotal aria using actual lines from the Bhagavad Gita that Oppenheimer famously quoted: 'Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.'
Premiered in 2005, this opera became eerily prescient viewing after Christopher Nolan's 2023 Oppenheimer exploded the same material into blockbuster consciousness.
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