the aria batter my heart from doctor atomic recalls the form of

The last element I want to say is that John Adams finds it easy to integrate what has always been seen as apocryphal if not heretic within the Christian context and his defense of the point of view of the third Mary at the foot of the cross, Mary Magdalene, the Mary loved in his own way but as a love partner and not only a soul to be saved by Jesus, is exemplary.

Let’s note the Islamic approach in The Death of Klinghoffer is clear in the opera but messed up in the film adapted from that opera. First of all the Hindu tradition, then the Inca tradition and finally Islam. He is also typical of someone who grew in the Western world, mixing Christian and Jewish traditions but vastly opening his interest onto other ways of behaving in the world and seeing that world.

John Adams is a highly spiritual and committed composers in his operas: committed to the spiritual regeneration of the world needed in our century. The other operas are spiritual and referring to several spirituality: the Christian one of course, but also the Hindu way of thinking and the old Inca way of living. It shows how John Adams started with a political opera, Nixon In China, and he continued with two more, The Death of Klinghoffer and Dr Atomic. I have collected here all my reviews in their blog presentation of the operas produced so far by John Adams, plus two Chinese extensions for Nixon In China.

The aria batter my heart from doctor atomic recalls the form of