John sets it for Gerry [Gerald Finley, the baritone singing Oppenheimer] and full orchestra as a personal chaconne. Of course, you know that Robert Oppenheimer would be somebody who would have gone to an Alfred Deller concert or would have Alfred Deller records,

Basically the first half-hour of the opera is an extended prologue, which is all material from the first two weeks of July 1945, ... Germany has just capitulated. Truman is meeting Stalin at Potsdam, which is where all this pressure comes from for the test to work. Oppenheimer has been in these meetings in Washington to select the target, and it's full steam ahead to Japan.

The only thing that I will do that will annoy some people is I am taking poetic license a little bit with time and space onstage,

Thirty is a full orchestra, but we want to have a big orchestra.

An orchestra full of stars can be a disaster.

And, of course, I was singing cheap.