Author : Jos Hermans
Of all American presidents, Richard Nixon was not the worst. "Nixon was the most knowledgeable president on foreign policy we have ever had" Paul Craig Roberts believes. He was also an enemy of the deep state. Was he removed because he normalized U.S. relations with the Soviet Union and China, as Craig Roberts believes? The Washington Post had always been a mouthpiece of the CIA. Watergate was a joint operation by the CIA and Mossad to remove Nixon from the presidency, Michael Piper believes in "Final Judgment." Newly re-elected by the largest margin ever in American history, Nixon was replaced by a puppet of the deep state. "I sincerely apologize to the people who want to see Nixon as nothing but Iago," the composer of Nixon in China will say years later.
John Adams' Nixon in China is the geopolitical opera par excellence. The opera was an idea of Peter Sellars, who also produced the premiere in Houston in 1987. The subject Sellars undoubtedly found inspiring was the tension and thaw in diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China, a topic that has unfortunately become burningly relevant again against the background of the war rhetoric from Washington. However, the situation is completely different. In 1972, China was still an emerging superpower; today it has surpassed the US as the first economic superpower. Better yet, under the leadership of bosom friends Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, a Eurasian power bloc has emerged in no time, triggered by Washington's proxy war in Ukraine and by the West's extreme overreaction to the Russian military intervention: the sanctions, the blowing up of Nordstream, the seizure of $300 billion in Russian financial reserves. Meanwhile, the West's economic and financial war against Russia has exploded like a boomerang in its own face. When an emerging power threatens to overtake a power in decline, the likelihood of armed conflict is very high. It is a dynamic that Graham Allison has called the "Thucydides trap" in his book "Destined for War." About the struggle between Athens and Sparta, Thucydides wrote : "It was the rise of Athens and the fear it caused Sparta that made war inevitable." It does not require ideological differences to cause such a war. Clearly, the American rules-based order has run its course and the multipolar world order founded on sovereign states is a train firmly on the tracks. Glistening in the background are the outlines of China's Belt and Road project, the greatest economic-logistics project of all time. All of Eurasia is going to participate in it, and at last there is a chance for a lasting peace in the Middle East through the China-brokered agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Frustration and impotence can still move the US to extremely dangerous steps, and the question now is whether the hyenas with the polished faces who determine Washington's foreign policy have delivered the world from a new edition of Thucydides' trap by their war mongering in Ukraine and driving Russia into the arms of China. About this historic tectonic shift in the world order, someone should now write a new geopolitical opera. Preferably a Chinese or a Russian composer. Maestro Gergiev might conduct the premiere.
Valentina Carrasco makes the ping-pong tournament that preceded the historic meeting between the two world leaders the all-important scenographic starting point of her staging. While that choice does result in a poetic opening scene between red and blue-clad ping pong players, the opening chorus that conveys the Marxist utopia is now sung by both Americans and Chinese. And that is already a false start.
Quite a few scenes will slip into a certain Walt Disney aesthetic. A silver plastic eagle with glowing red laser eyes replaces the "Spirit of 76," the plane of the American delegation. The countless ping-pong balls frozen in their flight filling the stage in the finale of the first act is one of the most beautiful images. In a red cloak and black boots, Pat Nixon visits a store, a school, a commune and a pig farm. Very amicably she interacts with the red giant dragon who chases her through the green leaf forest. Kissinger plays with a globe like Chaplin in The Great Dictator.
Noteworthy was the composer's tweet in response to the premiere : "A colorful & aerobic "Nixon in China" with great singing & orchestra at Opera de Paris. What strikes me most, however, is the wisdom & depth & humor & beauty of Alice Goodman's libretto. Is there a better libretto? Tell me. Really? Not even Auden can match it." Doesn't that sound like a rebuke of the staging? Librettist Alice Goodman was born into a reform Jewish family, converted to Christianity and is now an Anglican parish priest in southeast England. Personally, I don't think the libretto is always successful. It vacillates between small talk, historical fact and a cerebral kind of poetry that regularly prevents one as a listener from finding connection with the characters, especially when the music is less inspired. Typical example is Pat Nixon's monologue "This is prophetic." Remarkable are the words the librettist puts in the mouth of the Great Helmsman : "I back the man who is on the right", "I like right-wingers", "The extreme left, the doctrinaire, tend to be fascist" and especially : "Our armies do not go abroad. Why should they? We have all we need".
Minimalism gave Adams his individual voice but already in his first opera [Nixon in China] he transcends the mechanistic minimalism that makes works like "Einstein on the Beach" so unbearable and which Adams calls "mindlessly repetitive." Adams' musical horizon covers big-band swing, jazz, populist Americana, Broadway musicals as well as European classics. Highlights include the terrific chorus "The people are the heroes now," Nixon's aria "News has a kind of mystery," the "Gam Bei" toasts with the chorus during the banquet, the exalted "I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung " reminiscent of Mozart's stratospheric writing for the Queen of the Night. In the earthy tonal painting of the landing of the "Spirit of 76" you can hear the kinship with Wagner's Rheingold finale. Another manifestation of Adams' eclecticism is the playing with the Jochanaan theme from Salome during the ballet "The Red Detachment of Women," which Alex Ross labels "a half charming, half repulsive simulacrum of totalitarian kitsch." It is also far too long. Is all this enough to qualify the work as a masterpiece? I find the rest rather mediocre and the finale with Choe En-Lai's "I'm old and cannot sleep" downright disappointing.
Both nations are confronted by Carrasco with their own failures of civilization, unfortunately in an intrusive, irritatingly illustrative way. The U.S. gets away easily with images of Vietnam and police brutality against blacks. While Nixon and Mao conduct their debate in the spotlight of history, a vault of windowless cages where books are burned and people tortured rises. Equally tiresome is the minute-long excerpt from "From Mao to Mozart - Isaac Stern in China," a video by Murray Lerner referring to the torture and public humiliation of Western-oriented Chinese music teachers, which introduces the third act. This puts the balance very much at the disadvantage of China while the libretto is actually seeking a balanced approach between American capitalism and Chinese communism. The People's Republic of China could certainly have helped the director refresh her memory. Since Feb. 20, you can read on the website of Foreign Affairs the document "US Hegemony and its Perils," an outright attack on the geopolitical position of the U.S. in which China condemns the political interference, military interventions and regime subversions and reminds of the 400 U.S. military interventions worldwide since 1776.
Adams wanted the singers electronically amplified. Consequently, it is not possible to say much meaningful about the vocal performances and the balance with the orchestra in this relay. Thomas Hampson and Renée Fleming are both past their prime and discharge their duties with familiar charisma. Kathleen Kim achieves the high notes of Mao's wife Chiang Ch'ing rather effortlessly, the red book in her hand. John Matthew Myers makes Mao Tse-Tung a rather fascinating character. Xiaomeng Zhang sings a rather characterless Chou En-Lai with broken English. But can we blame a Chinese person for that?
At the time, the New York Times wrote : "Mr. Adams has done for the arpeggio what McDonald's has done for the hamburger." Broken chords are frequently on the menu here. Brass, piano, saxophones and a synthesizer define the main colors in the orchestra. Great rhythmic precision is required here, but with Gustavo Dudamel there is surprisingly no real pepperpot in the orchestra pit. The frequent pedal notes in the double basses do not sound as beautiful and defined here as in the Sellars production of the Met (2012) conducted by the composer himself. The premiere, in the presence of the composer, saw a standing ovation in a packed Opéra Bastille. It is a rarity in Paris.
Still available for viewing at Medici TV and Mezzo.