The American operatic landscape is littered with recent adaptations of classic American novels that are little more than nostalgia trips telling audiences where they’ve been. John Adams and his librettist and director Peter Sellars stuck to their guns with Doctor Atomic, which depicts the final day before the Manhattan Project’s first test of an atomic bomb in 1945. No folksy Americana here: with a score using electronic noise and blistering sonic explosions, it shows how we arrived in today’s nuclear world.

Since its 2005 premiere at the San Francisco Opera, Adams has nipped and tucked some scenes, expanded others, and turned the role of Kitty Oppenheimer, originally for a mezzo-soprano, into one for a soprano. The revised version was first heard last summer at De Nederlanse Opera and has now moved to Chicago’s Lyric Opera. The work was co-commissioned by the three companies, and a new production opens at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in late 2008.