NUCLEAR FAMILY

The new opera season might be full of the usual suspects, including boatloads of crowd-pleasing Puccini and Verdi and a full 18 hours of German mythology, but the Metropolitan has peppered it with at least one opera that is actually relevant–John Adams’s 2005 work Doctor Atomic, which premieres tonight. A musical profile of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist responsible for heading the Manhattan Project’s efforts to invent the atomic bomb, Doctor Atomic portrays how, in frenzy and isolation, well-meaning scientists could create the most deadly weapon ever known. In conjunction with this new production, the Met will hold several upcoming lectures, including one on the women of the Manhattan Project, which should have been titled “More Than Bombshells.”

Mon., Oct. 13, 8 p.m., 2008