So about a month ago I got my weekly email from the rec office with their tickets to that week's events. But that week, a new genre was in the mix: opera. "Not bad," I thought to myself. Now I'll admit, I don't know much about opera apart from having a handful of arias and overtures on my ipod and having seen The Barber of Seville back in high school (hmm, does Tommy count?). But seriously, how can Dr. Atomic, an opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project, that touches upon such time relevant themes as the paradox of nuclear power, the threat of technology, and the burden of knowledge not be amazing? Especially when every time I go online I just read praise after praise. I'll admit I was skeptical at first of an opera that wasn't at least 100 years old and was performed in a foreign language. But wasn't Shakespeare that much cooler in high school when we got to rap it (at least I thought so anyways)? And in this crazy culture of cinematic revamps and franchise updates, Dr. Atomic has the potential to draw in a whole new audience to the opera. Moreover, this is a subject admittedly on the agenda for the Met, which has been trying, with great success, to appeal to a broader, more casual audience. Well Metropolitan Opera, I've already gone and scoped out all the shows I'm planning on attending this upcoming season. Bravo.
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