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Nixon in China (1987). John Adams /opera from the ground up/

Met image via Wikipedia

One negative, one mixed, and one positive view of the Metropolitan Opera production...

• HurdAudio:  It was the composition of Nixon in China that fell flat for me. I've noticed that John Adams has built a career upon taking compositional ideas from other composers (borrowing heavily from the language and sound of Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach for Nixon in China or lifting from Charles Ives's Central Park in the Dark in My Father Knew Charles Ives) and heavily diluting the sound. Gone were the additive processes and static elaborations of Glass. All the sharp corners and dissonances filed down to a consonant sheen.
• Out West Arts: Nixon seemed like more of a wish about where this company should have been twenty years ago than an actual statement about where it's headed now...But Nixon is equally about the hallucinatory as well, and Adams and Sellars clearly reveled in the off-kilter version of the world they generate in Act III. And crazy, in and of itself, can sometimes be enough to justify a work or performance and the Met's new/old Nixon in China is often satisfying if not overwhelmingly so. 
• The Big City: If the goal of the piece was to document the meeting between a craven, petty failed president and one of the great villains of the twentieth century, then there is no way the opera would have the effect it does. And that effect is utterly mesmerizing and extraordinarily moving.
  It works with such power because it’s an opera. That’s a useful tautology. It’s an opera from the ground up, a musical drama that integrates libretto, music and staging from the initial conception. Everything works together, everything is done for a reason. 

Related articles

• Nixon in China (1987). John Adams /i love the incomprehensible philosophy/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• Nixon in China (1987). John Adams /anti-dramatic love/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• Nixon in China (1987). John Adams /unlikely operatic material/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• Nixon in China (1985-87). John Adams /sometimes in the future/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• ArtsBeat: Adams/Nixon: A Kitchen Debate on Portraying a President in Opera (artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Nixon in China (variety.com)

Nixon in China (1987). John Adams /i love the incomprehensible philosophy/

Mao image via Wikipedia

Kinderkuchen for the FBI on today's Nixon in China (which I skipped at the local multiplex due to my slothful nature and competing desire to watch the Ohio State basketball team lose):

I love Nixon in China. I love the minimalist idiom which always enhances the action. I love the "I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung" aria. I love the incomprehensible philosophy always lurking in the background. I could live entirely without the hand job in the last scene.

In fact the whole last scene is extremely anticlimactic. It was said several times that this is a modern masterpiece, and I am almost persuaded. The people being interviewed were pleased to be performing this opera on the day after the Revolution in Cairo. They made Mao and Chou seem to realize that revolution is only for a moment, like life generally.

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• Nixon in China (1987). John Adams /anti-dramatic love/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• Nixon in China (1987). John Adams /unlikely operatic material/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• Nixon in China (1985-87). John Adams /sometimes in the future/ (rgable.typepad.com)
• Nixon in China (variety.com)
• ‘Nixon in China’ fuses national and personal histories (theglobeandmail.com)
• Nixon In China (soundtime.wordpress.com)

Nixon in China (1987). John Adams /unlikely operatic material/

Image via Wikipedia

Amidst Santigold, Sex Pistols, and (Lisa) Stanfield among others, musicwhore likes Nixon in China:

Nixon in China is engaging, sometimes even exhilarating, even if the idea of a US diplomatic trip to a Communist country during the Cold War seems like unlikely operatic material.  

This reminds me that I was on a walk in a Palo Alto neighborhood back then and saw a TV showing the opera.

Related articles

• Nixon in China (1985-87). John Adams /sometimes in the future/ (rgable.typepad.com)
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Nixon in China (1985-87). John Adams /sometimes in the future/

Image via Wikipedia

SFist interviews John Adams, as he is conducting El Nino with the San Francisco Symphony this week. Interesting tidbit at the end:

[SFist] We read that SF Opera will do Nixon in China soon.

[Adams] I've heard that they're planning to do it sometimes in the future. David Gockley told me about his desire to produce it. Beyond that, I don't know any more details.

I wish they would do Glass' Einstein on the Beach but Nixon in China  might be enough to get me to take off the headphones and leave the house...

Nixon in China (1985-87). John Adams /where's peter?/

Image via Wikipedia

Mark Swed doesn't have much good to say about the most recent production and recording of Nixon in China, at least compared to the original by director Peter Sellars:

...watching a cutesy, ham-fisted attempt at literalism from a fanciful opera proved hardly revelatory when I saw this production five years ago in St. Louis.

Fortunately, Carpenter’s self-serving rewriting of history isn’t likely to have much effect. Sellars' production is, after 22 years, still with us. Crowds flocked to it, and critics celebrated it, when staged in London a couple of seasons ago. And long last, the Met will mount Sellars' production next season, with Adams on the podium.

Nixon in China (1985-87). John Adams /not yet actually *in* china/

NiC Image by Joel Mann via Flickr

Checking recent aworks referrers, I see someone was trying to determine if Nixon in China has been performed in China.

I still assume not but if anyone knows of anything upcoming, I'm there...

Speaking of the opera, Wikipedia:

The libretto, by contrast, was written completely in rhymed, metered couplets, reminiscent of poetic and theatrical styles native to China.

Nixon in China (1985-87). John Adams /...and in the bay area/

As mentioned in by Janos Gereben in the San Francisco Classical Voice, the Trinity Lyric Opera in Castro Valley, CA was going to present the Adams opera Nixon in China. However, he now reports via the OPERA-L listserv that the production may be cancelled:

Sources tell us that Boosey & Hawkes withdrew permission for the production, a highly unusual move at a time after Trinity's public announcement and most of the casting already decided. The publisher's action, which cited an error in issuing the license in the first place, makes one wonder if  the composer might have denied permission.

And Gereben also points to this note by Georgia Rowe, formerly of the Contra Costa Times:

When David Gockley became music director of San Francisco Opera in 2006, one of his first promises was to present the long overdue company premiere of John Adams' "Nixon in China" at the War Memorial Opera House. It hasn't happened yet, although when I spoke to Gockley last week about the company's 2008-09 season, he said "Nixon" will be programmed in 2010.

I would of course prefer to see both productions of what is arguably Adams' greatest work...

Adams apologists who scoff at such scheming (wait, I'm an Adams apologist), musicologically-inclined contrarians who disagree with the "greatest" comment, and Republicans longing for the good ol' days of Richard Nixon are welcome to comment.

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aworks: nixon in china. wikipedia: apology richard milhous nixon david gockley (hmm, no article yet).
 

Nixon in China (1985-7). John Adams /fighting the common enemy?/

I don't really have time to post these days but I found a link that deserves a quote longer than del.icio.us allows:

There was NO SINGING in Nixon in China. Seriously! There was chanting, there were what sounded like random notes thrown together, the kind of stuff that makes me think that the composer John Adams closed his eyes and started marking notes on blank sheet music with one hand tied behind his back. Then he gave that to the orchestra and to the singers and said, "Here's my Opera. Good luck, yo." It hurt to sit there. So how can it even be called an opera with no music to speak of?

Is this a recycled review circa Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach? And if that really was John Adams' compositional process, I personally think it sounds better than one would expect. But more importantly,
I should probably ponder my current take on the music of the composer since it had never occurred to me that Adams' take on minimalism is inherently unmusical. In a perverse way, I find it refreshing to hear that attack on this opera.

Still, I happen to be listening to the works of Earle Brown this week so I can respect the idea that some compositions could be inherently unmusical (although even with Mr. Brown, that may not actually be true).

Of course, I also look forward to SF Opera's production of Einstein on the Beach in some yet to be announced season. Maybe we'll get to see people picketing outside the opera...

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current political listening: live senate debate on cspan2 re: allowing a vote on the levin/reed amendment, as of at 11:16pm pdt. harkin actually gave a good speech presumably reflecting the views of iowans but the two senators that followed (republican and democratic, for the record) were grating. by the way, california senator barbara boxer is presiding madame president tonight and as an unexpected side comment, she acknowledged the fine civic (center) blogging of sfmike. ok, not really.

Nixon in China (1985-7). John Adams /recent news/

• Asian Dub Foundation's Gadafi opera has precedents. Guardian
• Giancarlo Guerrero will conduct The Chairman Dances - one of the most frequently performed modern orchestral works because of its rhythmic and tonal accessibility. Birmingham News
• John Duykers has sung in 41 world premieres, including Nixon in China and in Paul Dresher's upcoming The Tyrant. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
• Wynne Delacoma previews the Chicago performance of Nixon in China and quotes Adams as saying he is rewriting some of Doctor Atomic. Chicago Sun Times
• Peter Sellars is elected as a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. UCLA News
• Sound engineer Brian Mohr, who worked on Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic, is preparing for the Cincinnati performance of On the Transmigration of Souls. Cincinnati Post
• Steve Forrester complains: Except for Chiang Ching’s big song (“I am the wife of Chairman Mao”) there is no tune. Daily Astorian
• Jonathan Abarbanel points out that all of the principal Nixon in China characters are now dead. Windy City Times

Nixon in China (1985-7). John Adams /start here/

Via Messages from the Ether, scienceblogs discusses some contentious response to Scott Spiegelberg's recent "chacun à son goût" post. Suggestions for vocal music are made; some smart commenter suggests Adams' Nixon in China, which is an excellent introduction in many regards.

Fred's earlier post about Ned Rorem's songs has had me pondering my favorite American song composer. While maybe not suitable for classical novices (nor for rigid legacy listeners), Charles Ives is my current choice, although I like what I've heard lately of Virgil Thomson. The latter may be more suitable to popsters but compared to that world, his songs may be too tame.

Although I live at the intersection of popular and elite music, or more precisely, semi-popular and semi-elite, it took attending vocal recitals to really engage with this type of music.

free napster: nixon in china virgil thomson