Doctor Atomic is an opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with a libretto by Peter Sellars.

Although the original commission for the opera suggested that U.S. physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb", be fashioned as a 20th-century Doctor Faustus, Adams and Sellars deliberately worked to avoid this characterization.

[citation needed] Doctor Atomic is similar in style to previous Adams operas Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, both of which explored the characters and personalities of figures who were involved in historical incidents, rather than a re-enactment of the events themselves.

[citation needed] He also included poetry by Charles Baudelaire and Muriel Rukeyser, the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, quotes from the Bhagavad Gita, and a traditional Tewa native song.

I, like an usurpt town, to another due, Labor to admit you, but Oh, to no end, Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue, Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain, But am betroth'd unto your enemy, Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

This was borrowed from the Bhagavad Gita (translated into English by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood)[citation needed] and reads: At the sight of this, your Shape stupendous, Full of mouths and eyes, feet, thighs and bellies, Terrible with fangs, O master, All the worlds are fear-struck, even just as I am.

When I see you, Vishnu, omnipresent, Shouldering the sky, in hues of rainbow, With your mouths agape and flame-eyes staring— All my peace is gone; my heart is troubled.

It then opened in December 2007 at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, again directed by Sellars, with Finley and Owens reprising their roles.

Penny Woolcock's production was restaged by the English National Opera in London, February 25 to March 20, 2009, with Gerald Finley reprising his portrayal of the lead.

[12] For the second major production, at De Nederlandse Opera, Adams reworked the role for a soprano, Jessica Rivera.