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The production, directed by Peter Sellars, is creative and always effective. It is much 'tamer' than many of the productions for which Sellars became famous, and is always in full service of the drama being projected in the work. The musical team is superb -- very polished orchestra playing of what is (like most of Adams's orchestral music) a quite difficult score, and excellent musical direction by Donald Runnicles. The singing across the board was uniformly strong as well.

The particularly stand-out cast members in the production were the talented young Canadian baritone, Gerald Finley who sang the role of Oppenheimer, and the American bass Eric Owens, who played General Leslie Groves. Finley is a rising star and is recently receiving tremendous press for a new Hyperion CD release of art songs of American composer Charles Ives.

The peerless American mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson was originally scheduled to sing the role of Kitty Oppenheimer, but quite unfortunately pulled out of the production in the summer. The role was sung instead by American mezzo-soprano Kristine Jepson, best known in the area of new opera for her performance of the role of Sister Helen in the world première of Jake Heggie's opera Dead Man Walking, at San Francisco Opera in 2001.

However, the two female roles (Kitty Oppenheimer and Pasqualita) seem almost tokenistic additions in terms of their dramatic function. The primary narrative drama is projected entirely by the male characters, and the women focus primarily on the poetic and dream-sequence insertions.

The work was originally conceived by San Francisco Opera's artistic director, Pamela Rosenberg, as the culminating piece in an extended Faust cycle over the years of her tenure. In this way, she saw J Robert Oppenheimer as an 'American' Faust -- someone who had sought the knowledge, sold his 'soul' for the opportunity to get that knowledge (with the seemingly limitless resources given to the Manhattan Project), and then was supremely troubled with what he had unleashed. Adams and Sellars questioned somewhat the true Faustian nature of Oppenheimer, and although there are parallels in their treatment, it can hardly be said that Doctor Atomic traces a Faust story in any kind of straightforward manner.

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