John Adams gained his controversial repute with operas that enacted nearly contemporary events—with Nixon in China (1987) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1991). In Doctor Atomic (2005), he staged actions culminating in the Trinity moment of atomic detonation on July 16, 1945, and still potent to modern memory.
In (2017), Adams turned to narrative history based upon texts drawn from a range of authentic documents of the Gold Rush era. The wordy libretto allowed him a
