Following its Metropolitan Opera premiere earlier this month, John Adams's 2005 opera Doctor Atomic was described as the composer's "most complex and masterly music" by the New York Times and "hauntingly powerful, deeply humane and eloquent" by the Boston Globe. The Met production continues this weekend, and its Saturday matinee will be broadcast live in movie theaters around the world.

Starting at 1 PM ET on Saturday, Doctor Atomic will be transmitted across the globe through The Met: Live in HD, which, now in its third season, reaches close to 800 participating screens. The Met's general manager, Peter Gelb, talks to the Boston Herald about the screenings; their relationship with the live opera-going experience, which he elucidates with a baseball metaphor for the paper's local readership ("Seeing games on television makes you want to go to Fenway Park"); and the impact of watching Doctor Atomic, in particular, on the big screen.

"When I came to the Met," Gelb tells the Herald, "it had never done a John Adams opera. I was determined to bring him to the company. Taking advantage of that with new media just adds to the experience."

For information and participating theaters near you, visit metoperafamily.org.

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Adams's recently published memoir, Hallelujah Junction, was listed as an Editor's Choice in last week's New York Times Sunday Book Review, which states: "Adams’s wry, smart memoir stands with books by Berlioz and Louis Armstrong among the most readably incisive musical autobiographies."