Nixon In China

April 21, 2023 10:54 AM

John Adams' 1987 opera about recent history, Nixon In China [Wikipedia], is here performed in 2012 by Theâtre du Châtelet [2h43m, subtitled in French]. Here is the libretto in English and Spanish. Here also is Nixon In China, a 45 minute film from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.
posted by hippybear (15 comments total)

If this is your bag musically, don't miss Châtelet's performance of Einstein on the Beach from 2014 (more properly available on DVD, if you swing that way).
posted by mykescipark at 11:14 AM on April 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

Thanks hippybear, always been curious about this, even more so since visiting the Nixon Library on a whim last year.
posted by Rash at 11:56 AM on April 21, 2023

this is like, my third-favorite opera ever. (I say this as the child of a Metropolitan Opera violist. I have listened to too much opera in my life.)

but this one! This one is so weird and so great. It's stylized in a way I think is deeply supported by the minimalist chord progressions. For example, the three Secretaries in the Mao-Nixon-Chou scene and their physical echoes of the libretto and soundscape (1987 original Houston Opera performance)

The third act doesn't hang together narratively, though. Too much dreamscape.
posted by byzantienne at 1:16 PM on April 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thanks so much! I played The Chairman Dances in high school youth orchestra, which is made up of themes from the third act (note Dances is a verb here) and fell in love with Adams' music and minimalism more generally. Adams' also very nicely orchestrated the parts, at least for the Chairman Dances--as you can imagine, playing the repetitive patterns can be, well, repetitive and at least for the wind players, there was trading off so you weren't just playing eighth notes for 100 measures. I've played other pieces since then by composers that did *not* do this and it Was Not Fun.

This is, like byzantienne one of my favorite operas. The end of Act II is "I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung" (link to time stamp from post) is one heck of a coloratura aria. I was curious to see if the French subtitles attempted to get at the wordplay for the "When I appear the people hang/ upon my words" moment, but sadly they didn't (I know part of this might be sub/super title convention, where you get the translation the first go around, and that's it, but, still).

The 2011 Met Opera version of the aria with Kathleen Kim is something to be seen; Kim is fantastic, and then it just devolves into chaos at the end, with Pat Nixon in hysterics, and then Chairman Mao and Jiang Qing calmly looking over everything (nb., I think there are some issues around the casting of white opera singers in the role of Mao Tse-Tung, and, on top of that, the makeup used to make them look like Mao; I assume /hope that the Met would *not* make similar makeup choices today given their policy on no longer using "ethnic" make up as of (!) 2015.)
posted by damayanti at 1:51 PM on April 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

I love Nixon in China--I first saw it on PBS in the late 80s (I think?) and hunted down a copy (on cassette tape, if you can believe it). Nothing much to add, just fanning.
posted by jokeefe at 2:09 PM on April 21, 2023

This is great. I never cared much for opera until I saw the Houston performance. When Nixon comes off the plane, surveys those waiting, and bursts out "History!" Yeah, that was Tricky Dick. (Though the work humanizes him more than any other attempt to do so that I have seen.)
posted by CCBC at 3:42 PM on April 21, 2023

I saw Nixon in China in Denver (2008!) It was beautiful but put me to sleep. Any opera would have done it, but I was surprised because it's the only one I actually like. Used to drive my (ex) wife crazy, since she came from a classical music family (mom was a composer, dad was a tenor). I'm a pleb. My family's heard of music, but wasn't sure it was something normal people should be involved in.
posted by evilDoug at 6:39 PM on April 21, 2023

We saw the Met premiere of this—which, as I usually comment, how the hell was that 12 years ago?—and what sticks with me through all these years is

pig pig pig pig pig pig pig pig pig pig
posted by thecaddy at 8:21 PM on April 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

We saw the COC 2011 production. Yes, the pig farm chant is the first thing that comes to mind.

A few years later we watched the feature film version of Red Detachment of Women on YT. It was a fairly entertaining example of classic propaganda art.
posted by ovvl at 10:30 PM on April 21, 2023

Seminal work, this opera is tectonic. Quick pedantic musicology note: Adams’ music is not actually minimalist, and he is not considered to be a minimalist composer. He’s among the first significant post-minimalist composers, heavily influenced by that style but expanding it greatly. Not unlike Beethoven in his idiom: strong Viennese Classical roots, especially in his early music, but ultimately not considered Classical in style.

(Yes, I compared Adams to Beethoven. On purpose and I meant it. I’ve conducted a bunch of music by both of those composers and Adams’ music definitely holds up, it’s brilliant. Some favorite deep cut Adams, try Slonimsky’s Earbox or El Dorado. Or if you don’t know either of his first two large-scale symphonies, both are EPIC, Harmonielehre or Naive and Sentimental Music.)
posted by LooseFilter at 6:59 AM on April 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

A late comment here.

I love in Vancouver and when this city hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics there was a cultural festival attached to the event.
Nixon in China was the big, shiny jewel and a friend and I went. I have very little experience of opera, but I knew about the opera, through Nixon, who I find fascinating in an appalling way, and a review of the opera I had read years previously. So, why not?
It was stunning, absolutely stunning, and one the very best musical evenings I have ever experienced. I wish things like this had wider reach than they do, and I am extremely grateful for having seen this.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 1:47 PM on April 22, 2023

I still remember the first time my opera student friend in college played me the recording of the music for the landing of Air Force One... it's just so utterly overwhelming and powerful. I was a theater student, wanna-be director at the time, and listening to that music my brain just short circuited trying to think "what can you possibly put up on a stage during this music that can match it??" When I finally saw the Met Opera performance of the original Peter Sellars directed production - and all that happens is a totally flat, 2-D set piece painted to look like the plane just descends from the fly space...I can only think the idea is that "we can't visually equal this music, so we won't really try."

I skipped ahead to that moment in this version and they do even less - not even a representation of the plane, just a stairway.
posted by dnash at 4:24 PM on April 22, 2023

When I finally saw the Met Opera performance of the original Peter Sellars directed production - and all that happens is a totally flat, 2-D set piece painted to look like the plane just descends from the fly space...I can only think the idea is that "we can't visually equal this music, so we won't really try."

I think that is the production that was broadcast to movie theaters several years ago. That airplane descending vertically onto the stage was a moment of humor that ran through the audience when I saw it. Of course, you can't really DO that on-stage (although Miss Saigon tried), but just having Air Force One be a giant prop to aid Nixon's pilgrimage is a nice stage symbol.
posted by hippybear at 12:41 PM on April 24, 2023

I remember seeing the Sellars production at ENO, god, years ago now. It was vividly memorable. Janis Kelly was amazing as Pat Nixon; she basically owned the role for many years, as James Maddalena owned Nixon.

Speaking of owning roles: Korean soprano Hye Jung Lee absolutely blew the walls off the Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 2011 with this performance of Madame Mao's aria.

(The morning after we'd gone to ENO, the non-singer friend I went with left me a voicemail with *his* rendition of that aria, which was... memorable.)
posted by Pallas Athena at 3:07 PM on April 24, 2023

Shout-out to Civilization IV for incorporating this into its brilliant soundtrack for the Modern Era, alongside other minimalist Adams pieces like Shaker Loops, or "Christian Zeal and Activity" from American Standard (named after the appliance brand!). The opera is fascinating but fare like "The People Are the Heroes Now" and "The Chairman Dances" hits different when staring at a vast sprawl of continents and military units at 2AM. Or to borrow from some of the YT comments on the latter:

I like how in the beginning of the music it gives a feeling of hope, optimism and success, but then everything begins to fade away and a strong feeling of suffocation, stress and a magic illusion became more and more apparent. Like it would crash at any moment.

His works are fast, frenetic, disorienting for the first time, and sometimes it even evokes a sense of pointlessness, with chord changes seemingly thrown in at "random"--but, at the same time, his work is infused with a harrowing, evocative beauty which soars through the undercurrent, despite all the surface activity and rhythm.

Your millions of citizens scurrying like ants in their society of glass towers, perfect smiles and fusion-powered coffee makers, growing aware of the fact that they're three turns away from committing nuclear suicide. It's as if they're saying, "look at this wonderous thing we've built, what have we done?"

posted by Rhaomi at 7:27 PM on May 5, 2023