The Austrian premiere of the romantic mini-opera “Atom & Eve” (and the entire Improbable Research show of which it was the highlight) is now online.
The event occurred on Friday night, August 25, 2006, at the Alpbach Technology Forum in Alpbach, Austria. The mini-opera starred Frank Wilczek and Diane Shooman. (The image here shows the finale, with a team of Eve’s fellow scientists controlling the laser beams that keep little Atom in his exalted state as a Bose-Einstein condensate.)
The audience, 400 strong, included scientific, political, business, religious and other leaders from throughout Austria and around the world. Christoph Cardinal Schoenborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, sat in the front row.
Click here to see a downloadable, printable booklet of the libretto in English, German and Chinese.
Click here for a review (“Alpbach: Nobelpreistrager Wilczek als ‘Opernstar’“) with photos and sound clips, and here to see Betsy Devine’s insider’s notes about the performance. (Note: the very rightmost labcoat-clad, laser-pointer-wielding arm visible in the photo above belongs — 100% of it — to Betsy.)
(NOTE: The same web page that has the “Atom & Eve” video also points to video of Frank Wilczek’s talk, “The Universe is a Strange Place,” performed the next afternoon, and to Cardinal Schoenborn’s talk, “Faith and Science,” which immediately preceded the “Atom & Eve” session.)