Nixon in China

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Work data
Title: Nixon in China
Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1972

Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1972

Original language: English
Music: John Adams
Libretto : Alice Goodman
Premiere: October 22, 1987
Place of premiere: Houston Grand Opera
Playing time: about 3 hours
Place and time of the action: Beijing, 1972
people

Nixon in China is an opera in three acts by John Adams based on a libretto by Alice Goodman . Using the example of Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972 , the first state visit of an American president in China or the People's Republic of China at all, the opera is a satirical modern heroes - Myths apart. Richard Nixon met Mao Zedong and other Chinese personalities, the visit is considered an essential diplomatic achievement of his tenure and is also used figuratively in the USA . John Adams, who was very critical of Nixon, nevertheless spoke of a "bold gesture of walking straight into the communist heart of darkness and giving the locals a good old Rotarian handshake."

The opera was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music , the Houston Grand Opera, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts .

action

first act

In 1972 the presidential aircraft Air Force One , also called Spirit of 76 by Richard Nixon , lands at Beijing Airport . Nixon, his wife Pat and his advisor Henry Kissinger are greeted by Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai with a military parade. The delegation later meets Head of State Mao Zedong . Nixon pretends to be a smart businessman and tries to address specific political problems like the Vietnam War , but Mao refers him to the Prime Minister and makes it clear that his own area is " philosophy ". Every one of his confusing sayings is noted down by his secretaries. In the evening the Chinese have a great festival in the Great Hall of the People . Zhou raises his glass to the American delegation and wishes a peaceful relationship between America and China, Nixon thanks for the hospitality and regrets the tension so far.

Second act

Nixon's wife Pat visits a school, a pig farm and a factory that makes miniature elephants as part of the women's program. Even coming from a simple background, she seems genuinely impressed by this sightseeing tour. In a contemplative aria ("This is prophetic") she imagines a peaceful future for the world in which every way of life is respected and made possible.

In the evening the American delegation attended a ballet , accompanied by Zhou Enlai and Mao's wife Jiang Qing . This, a former starlet, is also the author of the now performed revolutionary ballet The Red Women's Battalion (红色 娘子军), in which women of the Red Army liberate the farmers of a tropical island from the oppression of a large landowner. In the open scene, she yells at the performers, demands that they wipe out the "fleeing dogs" and demonstratively boasts that she is Mao's wife. The guests are included in the ballet: Kissinger plays a brutal bailiff of the landowner (“Whip her to death”), Zhou Enlai an idealistic party secretary. Pat longs to return to tranquil California and is appalled by the bloody violence depicted, while Richard distributes money to the mercenaries of the large landowner. After the landowner and his people were evicted, there was a scramble between the pragmatic Zhou Enlai and the doctrinal Jiang Qing, from which the latter emerged triumphantly ("I am the wife of Mao Zedong"): an allusion to the clashes of the Cultural Revolution .

Third act

The last day of the state visit. Those involved are tired, only the Mao couple are in good spirits. The big breakthrough did not materialize; the final Shanghai communiqué only contains empty words, just enough for both sides to save face. The Maos begin to dance (Jiang Qing: “We'll teach these motherfuckers how to dance”). Both couples look back on their lives: Mao and his wife on the time of the revolutionary struggle, Nixon on his years as a marine in the war. Zhou remains thoughtful and asks, "How much of what we did was good?"

Instrumentation

The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:

A sound designer is required.

Work history

John Adams thought the handshake between Nixon and Mao was more far-reaching than the moon landing. Eleven years after the historic event, in 1983, the director Peter Sellars suggested an opera about it. Adams initially reacted negatively because, according to his own statements, he was not yet “relaxed” enough to write an opera about the president who wanted to send him into the Vietnam War. After careful consideration, Adams agreed, but it was important to use the textbook of a "real poet" as the basis in order to lift the plot from an everyday to an " archetypal " level. In December 1985, Sellars, Adams, and writer Alice Goodman , who had traveled from Cambridge to get to work, met. Goodman, who has been an Anglican minister at Trinity College since 2006 , was well educated in literary terms, but had no experience with opera, conversely, Adams claims to have known only one poem from her, but was very satisfied with her libretto because she had the "Creaking subtleties" of the diplomats in the White House translated into art just as well as the "gnomish remarks" of Mao and the pathos of the actors. Alice Goodman herself wanted her work to be understood as “great opera in the tradition of the 19th century”: “Nixon in China is literally designed as a 'heroic opera' - the protagonists appear larger than life, so to speak, and fully play out the pathos of a historical plot . “In the character drawing of Mao, Goodman claims to have taken inspiration from her notoriously irascible, much older husband, the British author Geoffrey Hill . According to his self-assessment, this had the potential of a “mad tyrant”.

Adams worked on the score for two years , a task he described as arduous but rewarding. He first asked himself what kind of music would best suit Nixon and came to the conclusion that it had to be the music of the "white big bands of the swing era ", the music of the American middle class, to which Adam's parents belonged. Therefore brass and woodwinds dominate, including four saxophones . The Chinese revolutionary ballet should sound as if it was not composed by an individual but by a “committee”, said Adams. He described his work as a “ Technicolor score”, inspired by the bright colors in communist propaganda pamphlets and US election campaigns, and used the orchestra like a “gigantic ukulele ”. In the structure of his minimal music , Adams oriented himself to Satyagraha by Philip Glass . Above all, he had learned to be flexible in his musical means of expression, wrote Adams looking back, that the strict and rigorous “modernism” in composition theory was detrimental to opera practice.

reception

The opera is now staged internationally on a regular basis and is one of the modern classics of minimal music, although the first reviews were rather restrained, probably because the world premiere production required "a few performances" before things went smoothly, even according to John Adams . At the time, in October 1987, the US opera critics were meeting for a convention in Houston, so the attention was great. Donald Henahan described the work in the New York Times as "insubstantial eye food". A quote from the critics became widely known: "Mr. Adams did with the arpeggio what McDonald’s did with the hamburger : He strained a simple idea for eternity". Henahan felt reminded of Richard Wagner in the few passages that he defined as "music" . The New Yorker critic , Alex Ross, considers Nixon in China to be the greatest American opera since Porgy and Bess and praised the work for leaving the “cobwebs of the European past” behind, an “epic poem” on contemporary history is a "dream tale in heroic pair rhymes ". Nicolas Kenyan considered the opera in the British Guardian to be “a thoroughly contemporary work” that is thoughtful, original and compelling.

Klaus Umbach also expressed himself benevolently in the mirror : "Made so chased, minimal music is anything but cabaret: transparent as by Mozart, tasty as by Richard Strauss, enriched with 'overripe Glenn Miller and the whole arsenal of American music tradition' (Adams), sometimes as crude as everyday pop, then, in contrapuntal precision work, almost like from a textbook. ”Umbach summed up that the Nixon couple and Henry Kissinger, who were not present at the premiere, had missed something. On the 20th anniversary of the premiere (2007), the local Houston Press Nixon in China certified the "remarkable and rare ability" to astonish and delight the audience, but the "weighty and serious" opera is also "startling and confusing". The “thick” and “hideous” libretto by Alice Goodman was criticized, which was only tolerable even for an English-speaking audience with surtitles. After a concert performance at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in March 2007, during which original footage from Nixon's visit to China was played, Richard S. Ginell in the Los Angeles Times was enthusiastic about how well music and television images go together added. This confrontation was a “brilliant idea” because it freed the opera from the numerous labels of being “satirical”, “heroic” or “surreal” and instead let the sources speak.

Composer Evan Mack and lyricist Josh Maguire were inspired by Nixon in China for their chamber opera Yeltsin in Texas , which is due to premiere on February 22, 2020 at the New Works Festival in Houston . It is about Boris Yeltsin 's visit to the supermarket in Houston, which is said to have opened his eyes to communism.

Further performances

A full list of performances is available from Boosey & Hawkes .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John Adams: Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life. New York 2009, unpaginated e-book.
  2. ^ Work information from Boosey & Hawkes , accessed on May 21, 2018.
  3. ^ John Adams: Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life. New York 2009, unpaginated e-book.
  4. ^ Albert Meier: John Adams: Nixon in China (1987) (PDF) .
  5. ↑ Sameer Rahim: Alice Goodman on writing political operas — and her late husband Geoffrey Hill. In: Prospect, August 17, 2017, accessed May 21, 2018.
  6. ↑ Donald Henahan: "Opera: 'Nixon in China'". In: The New York Times , New York, October 24, 1987.
  7. ↑ Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise , New York 2008, p. 666.
  8. ↑ Nicholas Kenyon: John Adams's Nixon in China world premiere: "a compelling, original and thought-provoking art-work". In: The Guardian , January 19, 2016, accessed May 21, 2018.
  9. ↑ Klaus Umbach: When the topics of the day are sung. In: Der Spiegel, October 26, 1987.
  10. ^ DL Groover: Nixon in China Returns to the Wortham With Musical Glories and a Dense Libretto. In: Houston Press, January 22, 2017, accessed May 21, 2018.
  11. ↑ Broadwayworld : Opera In The Heights Announces Its 2019-20 Season from February 15, 2019 [1] accessed on April 4, 2019
  12. ↑ Complete list of performances by Boosey & Hawkes , accessed May 21, 2018.
  13. ↑ Al Rudis: "Nixon in China" brings opera to Long Beach. In: Daily Breeze, March 12, 2010.
  14. ↑ Bright red coat in front of camouflage green suits. In: FAZ of February 8, 2011, p. 32.