sun 20/07/2025

Classical Reviews

Prom 62 Vienna Philharmonic, Mehta

Edward Seckerson

Schumann's

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Doctor Atomic, ENO

Igor Toronyi-Lalic

Among the most astonishing moments in John Adams's new opera Doctor Atomic (currently running at the English National Opera) is an aria at the end of the first act. The eponymous brains behind the Manhattan Project, Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer, stands alone on stage with his new creation, a spherical A-bomb coated in wires and tubes like a patient in intensive care, and sings John Donne's holy sonnet "Batter my heart, three-person'd God".

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