Revealing the physicist’s soul

Henrietta Bredin talks to the baritone Gerald Finley about how he portrays ‘the destroyer of worlds’

At precisely 5.30 a.m. on Monday 16 July 1945 the world entered the nuclear age. The first atomic bomb exploded in a searing flash of light and a vast mushroom cloud unfurled in the skies above New Mexico. ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,’ thought Robert J. Oppenheimer, the physicist who had masterminded its development.

It was typical of the man and the deep contradictions within his nature that these lines from the Bhagavad Gita should have come to mind, and that he should have named the project the Trinity Test in response to poetry by John Donne. Sixty years later, composer John Adams and librettist/director Peter Sellars created an opera around this subject, Doctor Atomic. In the title role in San Francisco in 2005, and in every performance since, was baritone Gerald Finley. He is now about to bring it to the stage of the London Coliseum, in a new production directed by Penny Woolcock, shared with the Met in New York.

Finley must feel a strong sense of ownership about this role. ‘I hope I’m not greedy with it but I certainly do feel extremely close to this opera. I love all aspects of it — the scientific argument, the moral arguments, the historical and political elements. The men who worked on that project were vulnerable, fallible human beings, and so close to us in time. And of course the repercussions of what they did are still with us now. I find myself feeling strangely protective of Oppenheimer. Before the first production I did a lot of research and reading, trying to find a way into his personality. He had an intensely poetic sensibility, a rigorously disciplined and incisive intellect, astonishing charm and an ability to be devastatingly cruel and cutting, all mixed up together. When we were rehearsing at the Met, a chorus member came up to me after the first rehearsal and said, “You sing this so well but I just hate Oppenheimer.” And I said, “Give it a few weeks. You’ll find it’s a little more complicated than just love or hate.”’

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