Doctor Atomic centres on the hours before the first detonation of the atomic bomb… Peter Sellars's film of the opera is expressionistic, claustrophobic, sometimes deliberately out of focus. The sound quality is exceptionally good, as is the singing and playing under conductor Lawrence Renes.

Gerald Finley carries the problems of the world on his shoulders as Oppenheimer and the Netherlands Philharmonic and Lawrence Renes play like it’s the best score since Fidelio.

The heart throbs...in scenes featuring Jessica Rivera as Oppenheimer’s wife, the opera’s symbol of warmth, sensuousness, and hope. But these are moments: the overall tone stays cool, intellectual. We watch as observers, not participants. Sellars directed this TV version himself. There are virtues here, and vices. Cinema aficionados dismayed by static shots may revel in the nervous visuals, the quick editing and close-ups (you grow very familiar with Rivera’s tongue). But by fidgeting so much, Sellars the film director often works against the interests of Sellars the stage director. Body movements are truncated; the patterns of Lucinda Childs’s choreography get lost. All too rarely do we grasp the big picture and enjoy the full impact of Adrianne Lobel’s stark sets, with desert hills silhouetted and the bomb, cradled with wires, looming overhead like a malevolent planet. Finley, Rivera, Eric Owens and the rest of the cast are always as eloquent as the opera allows, and Lawrence Renes’s conducting is on the ball. Extras are disappointing: too much of Sellars holding forth, not enough on the production