Its libretto, by Peter Sellars, is an assemblage of different sources including (but not limited to) scripture, weather reports, and poetry. It was through Sellars’s mélange (and Adams’s compelling settings of two poems) that I became acquainted with the work of Muriel Rukeyser, Oppenheimer’s near contemporary. Softly vehement, socially attuned, and always full of wonder, Rukeyser’s work richly rewards rereading, especially in a fractured time such as ours. Start with “Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)” and go from there.