The Stranger

When Doctor Atomic—the opera by revered American composer John Adams (Nixon in China) based on the making of the nuclear bomb in the New Mexican desert—had its world premiere in 2005 in San Francisco, critics hailed the music but weren’t too crazy about the libretto. Luckily, Adams created a symphonic adaptation without those pesky words in 2007, and that will be heard tonight for the first time in Seattle. The conductor is St. Louis’s David Robertson, who gave the US premiere of the adaptation at Carnegie Hall in 2008. The concert—which also includes a Weber overture and a Mozart piano concerto—is part of the symphony’s Friday-night “Rush Hour” concerts, which are slightly shorter than the average and have no intermission. (Benaroya Hall, 200 University St, www.seattlesymphony.org, 7 pm, $15–$79) by Jen Graves

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