History as Opera: Nixon in China
April 2013
A tautologous phrase it may be but, for want of a better one, we live today in a ‘globalised world’.
We are unavoidably aware just how connected our food and clothes, music, daily communications, and – of course – economy, are connected to almost every part of the world. It is all too easy, then, to forget just how new, and perhaps just how fragile, this current system of international relations is. In particular, given Australia’s importance to the Chinese economy today, and how ubiquitous the ‘Made in China’ tag has become, it is striking to think that it was just a little over 40 years ago that Richard Nixon arrived on Air Force One (named by Nixon ‘The Spirit of ‘76’) in the city the West still called Peking, to be greeted by the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. This was no mere act of diplomatic tourism; it singled the start of an historic rapprochement between two disparate cultures and two great political ideologies, capitalism and communism, that had for decades been in various forms of denial about each other.
Today, though, we can recognise what was less clear then: that this was also a meeting of two nations with rather similar political and economic ambitions. When events of such historical magnitude meld with personal motivations and the personalities of the chief protagonists, we also have the subject matter for great historical drama, or indeed great opera.
John Adams first considered just such an opera on the topic of Nixon’s visit to China in the summer of 1983 while in conversation with the director Peter Sellars. At that time, Nixon was a fallen idol – his reputation irredeemably ruined by his involvement in the Watergate scandal, but this of course made the subject matter only more intriguing. What was required, however, was a deft librettist, which luckily is what Adams found in Alice Goodman. Her verse text is, in Adams’ own words, “wonderfully complex guise, part epic, part satire, part a parody of political posturing, and part serious examination of historical, philosophical, and even gender issues.” Indeed, Adams has gone as far as to state that Goodman’s poem is “one of the great as-yet-unrecognized works of America theater… a summary, an incantation of the American experience, and her Richard Nixon is our presidential Everyman: banal, bathetic, sentimental, paranoid.”
A great libretto is, though, nothing more than a great possibility without a great score, and Adams certainly provided that. As Goodman conceives it, the events of February 21-28, 1972 ultimately are a vehicle for us to reflect upon the ways in which we seek to turn history into myth. Adams’ score, with its minimalist drive underpinning complex rhythmic shapes and soaring lyricism, arguably does exactly the same thing in musical terms. At times the music takes on a ritualistic quality as if, like the actors on stage, its momentum is derived ultimately from larger, greater, forces than the will of the composer himself.
For all the modern compositional devices, however, Nixon in China is at heart a traditional grand opera. Like the great representatives of this genre from mid nineteenth-century Paris, the work succeeds by melding a score with genuine mass appeal with a dramatic subject matter that is essentially a philosophy of history. Furthermore, like its forebears, it makes clever use of stage spectacle, the chorus is used as a symbol of historical forces and groups, not just of an individualised ‘people’, and it also has a ballet (in this case a political ballet based on the style of dance that had been common in the Cultural Revolution). Lastly, while the plot centres around the principle male characters, it also gives the two principal female roles (Pat Nixon and Chaing Ch’ing – ‘Madame Mao’) genuine agency as historical figures in their own right, as well as allowing us through them to understand something of the private cost of public power.
To pull this all off, a production of Nixon in China requires supreme technical precision from the whole ensemble and from all accounts the cast is an excellent one. They are to be led in the pit by Melbourne-based conductor Fabian Russell, who in recent years has built a national reputation as an interpreter of Adams’ orchestral music (not least evidenced by a stunning performance earlier this year of Harmonielehre with the Australian Youth Orchestra). Director Roger Hodgman and designer Richard Roberts round off an all-Australian production team.
Whether opera is your ‘thing’ or not, Nixon in China should be high on any list of ‘must see’ arts events for the year.
Victorian Opera presents Nixon in China at Her Majesty’s Theatre on May 16, 18, 21 and 23 at 7:30pm. Tickets available through Ticketek website or call 1300 795 012.
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