“Doctor Atomic” is an opera in cycle on PBS these days. It is an English language contemporary one. I had it on and wasn’t paying a lot of attention doing something else at the same time, mostly listening to the music. It was a little modern and used too much brass for my taste but had some good dark passages that suited me enough to continue listening.
All of a sudden I heard “Senses… objects of the senses…temporary” which sounded like a verse from the Bhagavad -Gita. As it turned out it was. The opera is about developing the atomic bomb and the first test blast. Robert Oppenheimer is the lead character. It is well known he quoted Gita when the bomb went off.
Turns out the libretto was based in part on the Bhagavad Gits and it shows in several places. Read about how the libretto was made here.
For another take on “Doctor Atomic” click here.
