“John Adams and librettist and director Peter Sellars have enjoyed some success in previous collaborations with Sellars directing Adams’ first two operas. Yet even with a talented cast, striking visual design and some extraordinary and often beautiful music by Adams, Doctor Atomic is fatally undermined by Sellars’ convoluted libretto and silly, distracting directorial conceits, which at times provoked unwonted laughter from the opening-night audience.”