A bonanza precedes a bombshell

THIS fall, there will be no escaping the operatic explosion of John Adams’ “Doctor Atomic.” The entire music world will be focused on the new work’s detonation by the San Francisco Opera on Oct. 1 (story Page E64). But the lead-up to it is also remarkable, opera-wise. Four more new operas will have been unveiled in the three weeks before this megaton premiere, and they are all revolutionary in one political, theatrical, sexual, conceptual or literary way or another.

First, in Erfurt, Germany, there’s Philip Glass’ latest, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” based on the timely 1980 novel about prisoner abuse by the South African Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee. The libretto is by the playwright and director Christopher Hampton.

The linguistically audacious young American novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, whose recent “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” examines 9/11 from the point of view of a 9-year-old boy, will be represented next, goading seven daring composers and directors into something or other operatic. Whether everything will be illuminated, or will coalesce, in “Seven Attempted Escapes From Silence,” who knows? But the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, which commissioned the project, means to find out come Wednesday.

That leaves opera jet-setters just enough time to comfortably get to London, where the English National Opera opens its fall season Friday with something uncomfortable: Gerald Barry’s “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” based on the 1972 Rainer Werner Fassbinder film that concerns the lesbian relationship between an angst-ridden, middle-aged fashion designer and a gorgeous, callous young woman but that is also full of radical political overtones. Back then, the German Fassbinder flirted with the left-wing terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang.

Finally, the “Wall” will come down when Pink Floyd meets Puccini in “Ca Ira,” an opera on the theme of the French Revolution written by Roger Waters, the British rock band’s onetime lead singer. A two-CD set (to include a DVD documentary) is to be released by BMG Masterworks/Columbia Records on Sept. 27, and it raises the rock opera (or whatever) stakes considerably, since it stars no less than the great Welsh baritone Bryn Terfel.

Even New York’s stodgy Metropolitan Opera has commissioned a new opera for later in the fall. Don’t expect anything revolutionary from Tobias Picker’s “An American Tragedy” on Dec. 2, but the American melodrama will boast a starry cast (with Susan Graham, Patricia Racette and Jennifer Larmore among the women). Francesca Zambello will direct, and Los Angeles Opera’s music director-designate, James Conlon, will conduct.

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“Waiting For the Barbarians,” www.theater-erfurt.de. “Seven Attempted Escapes From Silence,” www.staatsoper-berlin.org. “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” www.eno.org. “Ca Ira,” www.rogerwaters.com. “An American Tragedy,” www.metopera.org.