Just got home from seeing Doctor Atomic.

What an awesome opera!

John Adams has a habit of cramming lots of relevant material into a piece.

In El Nino he quoted the Bible, Gnostic Gospels, South American poetry when telling the story of the Nativity.

In Doctor Atomic he quotes the Bhagavad Gita (which I'm a bit of a fan of from watching various pieces of theatre) because Oppenheimer quotes it in his diaries a lot.

Here's a clip from a production of it. (The New York Met production is much more naturalisitic)

The characters are singing a section of a hymn of praise to Vishnu but it doubles as a sideways description of the atomic bomb and it's devastation.

Here's what they're singing:

At the sight of this, your Shape stupendous,
Full of mouths and eyes, feet, thighs and bellies,
Terrible with fangs, O master,
All the worlds are fear-struck, even just as I am.
When I see you, Vishnu, omnipresent,
Shouldering the sky, in hues of rainbow,
With your mouths agape and flame-eyes staring—
All my peace is gone; my heart is troubled.

For me it's the first line that grabs me. "At the sight of this, your shape stupendous". Just try saying that out loud... go on... say it out loud and feel the weight of the various 's'-s. Makes me want to go back and reread the Bhagavad Gita.