The first act takes place about a month before the bomb is to be tested, and the second act is set in the early morning of July 16, 1945. During the second act, time frequently slows down for the characters and then snaps back into reality.—Ulf Kjell Gür

Which better subject John Adams and Peter Sellars could have chosen to enunciate the fall of the modern world? The atomic bomb and its inventor, Robert Oppenheimer (Gerald Finley), are in the middle of the action of this opera, which premiered in 2005 at the San Francisco Opera. After him, the world will never be the way it used to be, and is inexorably shifting towards the nuclear era. And yet, this opera focuses on common and universal problems, including love stories and broken hearts.—Ulf Kjell Gür