Countdown

Extracts from an article about Doctor Atomic by

Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 3 October 2005

Photo by Steve Pyke

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/03/051003fa_fact_ross?currentPage=all

…The man singing Oppenheimer is Gerald Finley, a forty-five-year-old Canadian with a firm jaw and a hypnotically expressive baritone voice. In the past few years, he has scored international triumphs in such mainstream roles as Don Giovanni and Figaro. He has also worked steadily in the less glamorous realm of contemporary opera, and seems happiest when taking on thorny, elusive characters. In the “Atomic” rehearsals, he was tireless in his pursuit of nuances, and often could be seen in the corner, puffing on a fake cigarette—Oppenheimer’s chain-smoking is a leitmotif of the opera—and trying out different readings of a line. Like almost everyone involved in the production, he had become an enthusiast of the atomic literature, and, naturally, he had thought harder than most about the central character.

…“He wanted to believe in the beauty of natural forces,” Finley told me at lunch one day. In the opera, Oppenheimer speaks of the “brilliant luminescence” of the explosion. “When there was an imperfection, it would drive him crazy,” Finley said. “Faust is the obvious connection—the craving for knowledge and the cruelty of having that knowledge, if you like, and the punishment of having that knowledge.”

…Oppenheimer answers Teller by archly quoting Baudelaire: “The soul is a thing so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes so embarrassing that at this loss I felt only a little more emotion than if, during a walk, I had lost my visiting card.” Sellars gave Finley an indication of what this allusion might mean: “It’s like, ‘Oh, really, Edward, you’re worried about losing your soul? Well, I lost my bus ticket yesterday. I was upset. That transfer is an extra quarter!’ The most soulful character in the history of science is acting like a soul is a trivial thing. Get a little pyrotechnic with it. With your butterfly mind, just feel that you can literally go rings around him.”

Finley ran through the Baudelaire lines in a lighter, airier tone. The words “visiting card” fluttered in the air, and the singer accentuated them by wiggling his fingers.

“Great great great great great great great great great great great cool cool cool cool,” Sellars said, in about the time that most people would say, “Great, cool.”

… Again, Oppenheimer engages in a masterly manipulation. Sellars said to his lead singer, “When Wilson starts speaking, would you start very slowly coming the entire distance—smoking, listening—and then say something that is going to be very unpopular with all these young people: ‘What do we know about Japanese psychology? How can we scientists judge the way to end the war?’ Be prickly. You’re saying, Look, you’ve come this far in the countdown. Five minutes before, two billion dollars later, twenty thousand people working for two and a half years, and now you say, ‘Uh, O.K., go home, thanks’? Physics in the last twenty years has become the most powerful thing in the world, the single greatest power in the history of the human race. As a scientist, you want to know if it works.”

Finley sang the words with his usual nobility. Sellars instructed, “Gerry, come straight down, like a piranha. You have to be the bad guy, and what that means for you to have to be the bad guy is what I want to feel. You’re somebody who’s into the nuances of Baudelaire and you’re talking about ‘Japanese psychology’? It’s offensive, what you’re saying. You’re saying this just to provoke them.” Sellars also said, “As you know, Oppenheimer is being grilled around the clock by these government security people about every damn thing about your past. They’ve missed Klaus Fuchs, who is actually reporting on the bomb to Stalin, and meanwhile you’re being harassed on a weekly basis about”—Sellars snarled—“minuscule shit. These people will not rest until you are dead.”

…The scene begins with Oppenheimer once more savoring lines of Baudelaire: “To what benevolent demon do I owe the joy of being thus surrounded with mystery, with silence, with peace and with perfumes?”

Sellars went through the poem with Finley word by word, working out gestures and facial expressions. The singer got to the line “That supreme life which I now know and which I am tasting minute by minute.” Sellars, uncharacteristically, made no comment. Finley asked, “Do you want anything special on ‘tasting’?” Sellars responded, “Oh, God, yes.” The passage ends, “Time has disappeared; it is Eternity that reigns now!” Oppenheimer, at this late stage, seems far gone, lost in the desert of his mind.