Instead of rushing with an instant review of a new opera - as most critics must - Steven Winn today takes a thoughtful look "in hindsight" at the John Adams/Peter Sellars "Doctor Atomic" which premiered in the War Memorial on Saturday: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/06/DDGP7F2IJC1.DTL I am glad to see Winn's lead, about the bomb-and-cradle image overstaying its welcome, which I mentioned in the "instant" review of http://www.sandiego-online.com/opera/opera.shtml "What could have been a striking image, the bomb suspended over a cradle, is used endlessly in the second act, which seriously blunts the intended effect. Unlike the perhaps excessive trust in the listener's education and intelligence elsewhere, here Sellars and his design team keep making a point, until it becomes moot." - but when Winn wonders if "a certain alienation effect was *intended*" I rather believe that Adams and Sellars did not mean to distance the audience deliberately, that the problems of the second act are caused by running out of creative juices. Winn describes "Doctor Atomic" as "bending back on itself over its three-hour running time... in all its calculation, solemnity and analytical rigor." My take was that the glowing high points of "old-fashioned opera" in "Doctor Atomic" will assure its success and survival, making long stretches of post-modernistic calculation and distancing (kind terms for the opera's artistic weaknesses) worth sitting through... awaiting the next outburst of plain-speaking music of emotion. Janos Gereben www.sfcv.org [log in to unmask]