In September, audiences in Cambridge (UK) will be treated to a rare mix of music, theology, and genetics at the world premiere of “Parthenogenesis,” a new musical theater work by British composer James MacMillan. The work was inspired by a story of a virgin birth (no, not that one) in Hanover, Germany, in 1944. A young woman caught by the blast of an Allied bomb gave birth nine months later to a daughter whose fingerprints, blood type, and other indicators were identical to those of her mother. Physicians suggested that the bomb blast could have jarred a somatic cell within the woman's womb, triggering parthenogenesis. A good story, yet Macmillan's grip on genetics is, perhaps understandably, a little tenuous. Sections of the score feature an actress speaking the part of the unborn parthenogenetic child. Her accompaniment, says MacMillan, is “material based on the genetic sequencing of Adenine-Cytosine-Thymine-Guanine, currently being mapped in the Human Genome Project, which is providing scientists with a supposed calculation of humanity.”