Batter My Heart, Three-Person'd God

the long version

Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars. It premiered at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. The work focuses on the great stress and anxiety experienced by those at Los Alamos while the test of the first atomic bomb (the "Trinity" test) was being prepared. The work centers on key players in the Manhattan Project, especially US physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb," General Leslie Groves, and also features Kitty Oppenheimer, Robert's wife, and her anxiety over her husband's project. Sellars adapted the libretto from primary historical sources. - Wikipedia. "Oppenheimer begins to sing, pouring out his soul in stark, anguished, cantorial phrases. The words "Batter my heart, three-person'd God" are John Donne's, the music is the creation of America's greatest living composer, and the scene compresses all the terror and fascination of the opera's subject into eight minutes of wrenching, sinewy musical genius ... a major addition to the operatic repertory of this new century." - San Francisco Chronicle.