The BBC announcer comments at the end of the premiere of Doctor Atomic Symphony:
A highly charged score for a highly charged period in American history.
Based on one pass at listening to the BBC stream, compared to the opera, this version was only moderately charged and maybe not as weird as I imagined. I knew the electronic overtures had been dropped but it's possible I miss the odd staging as well.
Here's what I said a year ago about the opera:
I still haven't decided if the music of Doctor Atomic was something of merit or not. It was in Adams' Nixon in China, despite the composer saying he used the orchestra as if it were a "ukelele." A year later, the electronic sounds of Doctor Atomic remain the most memorable.
Prior aworks posts after seeing the opera and then seeing it again show my mixed reaction at the time. And here are some quotes about the influence of Edgard Varèse on Doctor Atomic.
Next up on that BBC stream, Norman Lebrecht interviews Peter Sellars and they talk about Sellars' early interest in snakes and marionettes, among other topics.
aworks: doctor atomic
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