On November 8, the Atomic Heritage Foundation and friends will be making a special trip to New York City to see a matinee performance of Doctor Atomic at the Metropolitan Opera. Doctor Atomic is an acclaimed modern opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project with music by John Adams and a libretto by Peter Sellars that draws on historical materials from technical documents to Romantic poetry. Before the matinee, the Foundation has organized an informal seminar to help put the opera in context, and after the performance, a dinner at the local Compass Restaurant.
Doctor Atomic first premiered in San Francisco on October 1, 2005. It has since been performed at the Lyric Opera in Chicago and the De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam, to critical and popular success. After its run at the Met, it will move to the English National Opera in London.