John Adams' `Doctor Atomic' opens at Met Opera (AP)

NEW YORK - A-bomb is a hit at the Metropolitan Opera.

John Adams' intense and fascinating "Doctor Atomic," given its world premiere at the San Francisco Opera three years ago, made it to the Met on Monday night. Rather than use Peter Sellars' original production, which also was seen in Chicago and Amsterdam, the Met created a new staging — a rarity for a work this new_ by Penny Woolcock.

She has done away with Lucinda Childs' hyperkinetic choreography and created a far more direct and effective narrative. Driven by propulsive music, the first act moves swiftly. And while the second drags during its hallucinatory middle, the countdown to detonation and destruction is tense and tantalizing.

Adams — who also composed "Nixon in China" (1987) and "The Death of Klinghoffer" (1991) — has created one of the more successful contemporary operas. Still, modern music is a tough sell, and orchestra seats that usually go for $175-$220 were discounted to $30 following a $500,000 donation by a Met board member. It's the bargain of the season.

Stripped of the running, leaping and pirouetting, the focus of "Doctor Atomic" becomes sharper. The contempt and sneering of Gen. Leslie Groves at the cigarette- and cigar-puffing Los Alamos scientists hisses like steam. The moral second-guessing by Edward Teller and Robert Wilson floats like a cloud over the cool, analytic fatalism of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Kitty Oppenheimer's opening aria, "Am I in your light?" becomes a dreamy counterpoint.

Before the curtain rises in Woolcock's production, a periodic table of elements is projected on a scrim and loud electronic sounds are played, as if bombers are overhead. After the music starts, photos of the Manhattan Project team are projected in three rows of 14 rectangles each onto a wooden set designed by Julian Crouch. The people behind the photos are revealed.

What appears to be white sheets form New Mexico's Oscura Mountains. Mobiles of debris hang above the stage. Rain and other visions by Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer are projected.

The Bomb — referred to as "The Gadget" — looks pretty much as it did in the first production, a sphere based on photographs of the original test bomb that was detonated on July 16, 1945. When booming recorded music fades at the end, the voice of a woman at Hiroshima begging for help and water in Japanese is heard.

Sellars' libretto is based on memoirs, interviews and histories; texts of works by John Donne, Muriel Rukeyser and Charles Baudelaire; the Bhagavad Gita; and Songs of the Tewa. Curiously, for a libretto dealing with science and numbers, the weight-conscious Groves reads from his diet diary and claims three pieces of chocolate cake totaled 300 calories and two brownies 200. Indeed, kilotons aren't the only figures that have inflated through the years.

Adams has created a score filled with color, syncopation and lush interludes. The most moving aria is Oppenheimer's at the end of the first act: "Batter my heart, three person'd God," with a text from Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV interrupted by urgent, frantic music portending doom. Oppenheimer named the test site Trinity because of that sonnet.

The primary misstep to this ear was the overuse of Pasqualita, the Oppenheimers' Native American maid, in the more abstract passages of the second act. Her visions sounded like ruminations from a Great Mother Goddess and tended to slow the pace.

Many of the singers reprised their roles from the original production, including baritone Gerald Finley (Oppenheimer), bass-baritone Richard Paul Fink (Teller), bass-baritone Eric Owens (Groves) and tenor Thomas Glenn (Wilson). They were joined by mezzos Sasha Cooke (Kitty) and Meredith Arwady (Pasqualita) and baritone Earle Patriarco (meteorologist Frank Hubbard). After watching the excellent Opus Arte DVD of Sellars' production recorded in 2007 and the Met's opening-night performance, it became clear that the primary singers' interpretations have deepened considerably.

Finley, Fink and Owens managed their soaring vocal lines magnificently. Cooke was a bit screechy as the alcoholic Kitty. Arwady was moving.

The chorus sang with beauty — even after being forced into twisted and sometimes upside-down positions in the rectangles. Alan Gilbert, who takes over as music director of the New York Philharmonic next season, conducted with vigor and drama in his Met debut.

The staging, a co-production that travels to the English National Opera in February, has eight more performances through Nov. 13, and the Nov. 8 matinee will be televised to movie theaters around the world in high definition. "Doctor Atomic" is proof that contemporary opera can be a fulfilling experience.

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