Sellars is also the librettist for Doctor Atomic, having assembled the work's text from a variety of sources, including memoirs, government documents, the Bhagavad-Gita, and poetry by John Donne, Charles Baudelaire, and Muriel Rukeyser.
The creative team includes set designer Adrianne Lobel, costume designer Dunya Ramicova, lighting designer James F. Ingalls, sound designer Mark Grey, and choreographer Lucinda Childs, who also collaborated with Sellars and Adams on Nixon in China.
The world-premiere performances star Gerald Finley in the central role of scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Kristine Jepson as his wife Kitty, Richard Paul Fink as Oppenheimer's colleague and nemesis Edward Teller, Thomas Glenn as scientist Robert Wilson, Eric Owens as General Leslie Groves, James Maddalena as meteorologist Jack Hubbard, Jay Hunter Morris as Captain James Nolan of the Army Medical Corps, and Beth Clayton as Pasqualita, Kitty's Tewa Indian maid.
San Francisco Opera's production runs through October 22; it travels to the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Netherlands Opera in 2007.