"Nixon in China": My Favorite Opera

I recently devoured Michael Dobbs's book King Richard, a page-turner focused on 100 days between Nixon's triumphant landslide re-election and the day when he recognized that he had no control over the Watergate scandal that would lead to a vote to begin impeachment proceedings, followed quickly by resignation. I could not put the book down because of the weirdness of discovering just how incompetent Nixon and his minions were. Most telling is the way he kept repeating the mantra "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up" that made him a political star during the House Un-American Activities investigation of Alger Hiss -- only to get enmeshed in cover-up activities himself. He was so deep in denial.

That said, I'm glad to have a reason to pull together all the different reflections I've made through the years on the opera Nixon in China by composer John Adams, librettist Alice Goodman, and director Peter Sellars. The piece is so important to me that I'm astounded that the title hasn't been prominent in my blog so far. Today, I make amends! I'm stringing together comments I've made about Nixon in other contexts. Links to the original articles are listed at the end.

Nixon and ArtMy friend John Davis, polymath and astute observer of everything, opined when the opera premiered that Nixon would long be a source for artists, while Reagan, Johnson, and most others never would be.

Why?  Davis suggested that, for a man so determined to control his own image, Nixon's inner conflicts and torments were always on view.  Nixon argued endlessly that he made all of his choices for the right reasons.  His good intentions make him tragic; his lack of self-awareness makes him comical.

I'll go out on a limb and say that the opera NIXON IN CHINA has become one of my favorite works of art in any medium. Here, I have special authority, because I was at the premiere. [I've since seen a very different-looking production by the Cincinnati Opera and a much grander remake of the original on the Live in HD Series at the Metropolitan Opera. SEE PHOTO]

In 1987, I drove the ten hours from Jackson MS to Houston TX to see the opera's world premiere. I admit that I got totally lost in the long bombastic scene with Nixon, Mao, Chou, Kissinger, and Mao's secretaries; that I was baffled (and bored) by the "ballet" in Act Two, and I had trouble staying awake in Act Three -- in which all the principals prepare for sleep after the final day of the summit, with six plain roll-a-beds, as if they're retiring to their cabin at summer camp.

As I walked among national TV crews and even literally ran into the entourage of the "kid wonder" director Peter Sellars, his orange hair standing straight up four inches -- I was thinking that the music was never less than pleasant, but I wasn't all that excited. I also couldn't decide what I thought about several places where the orchestra was reaching for big, ominous climaxes while the stage action was extremely banal, as when we watch Pat Nixon put on her hat and gloves for a day of touring. That seemed like bad staging to me.

Through recording and a PBS Great Performances video of that same performance, I grew to appreciate even those parts that baffled or bored me at the time. If I was baffled by Mao and his strident secretaries, well, so are Nixon and Kissinger. (Mao makes an oblique pronouncement and leaves Nixon -- the dogged student and striver all his life -- to interpret it as a statement of policy; Chou En Lai reassures Nixon: "It was a riddle, not a test.") If Madame Mao's propaganda ballet seemed to dissolve into chaos as Pat and Dick rush on stage to help the heroine with a glass of water -- well, I've learned to see this as an amusing theatrical trick that embodies the difference between Mao's hard doctrines about classes and systems and empathetic Americans' visceral response to personal stories.

The Cincinatti Opera's production made a backdrop from a bank of TV screens, and crowded the stage with replicas of those eerie hundreds of clay soldiers we've seen from China. Both added resonance to the wonderful opening of the opera. Adams's overture builds patterns over a rising a-minor scale; then a chorus of Chinese people in their Mao-fatigues sing incongruous phrases from his "Little Red Book" - "Respect women: it is their due...Close doors when you leave a house... roll up straw matting after use"

In 1987 and again on HD, the arrival of Airforce One is a delight. Adams's orchestra mimics the hum of an airplane engine; the chorus moves out of the way; the plane lands from the ceiling like an immense cardboard cut out; and Nixon and Pat appear at the open door waving--to rapturous applause and laughter.

Art and Americans Adams, Goodman, and their director Peter Sellars caught some criticism from Nixon haters for presenting Nixon at his height of success, using only resources pre-Watergate, putting verse in his mouth that represented him as he might have seen himself.  Thus, Nixon sings in his "News" aria,

On our flight over from Shanghai,
The countryside looked drab and gray.
"Bruegel," Pat said.  "'We came in peace for all mankind,'"
I said, and I was put in mind 
Of our Apollo astronauts, simply achieving a great human dream.
We live in an unsettled time.
Who are our enemies?  Who are our friends?

... As I look down the road, I know America is good at heart...
Shielding the globe from the flame-throwers of the mob.
                  
                               (quoted from memory - apologies if I miss some words)

There we have laconic Pat, Nixon's pretentions and his goofy inability to separate personal from public.  (Biographer Stephen Ambrose tells how Nixon, kneeling beside a woman injured by his motorcade, crowd and cameras watching, asked what she thought about tax policy!  That's the Nixon we have in the opera, wanting desperately to be good, apt to orate, unable to connect to Mao or even to Pat.

Since composer John Adams's falling-out with librettist Alice Goodman is pretty famous, dwelt upon in another book THE JOHN ADAMS READER, I was especially interested to see how Adams treats her with respect and appreciation. He writes,

She could move from character to character and from scene to scene, alternating between diplomatic pronouncement, philosophical rumination, raunchy aside, and poignant sentiment. And she did all this in concise verse couplets, exhibiting a talent and technique that has nearly vanished from American poetical practice. (136)

His citation of lines from Pat Nixon's aria "This is Prophetic" brought tears to my eyes, as he focused my attention on an aspect of the words that I hadn't seen so clearly before. Here are the lines that he quotes, as Pat Nixon piles image of America on image in the form of a prayer :

Let lonely drivers on the road
Pull over for a bite to eat,
Let the farmer switch on the light
Over the porch, let passersby
Look in at the large family
Around the table, let them pass.

Adams comments, "It was part of Alice's genius to be able to handle images of Americans -- so routinely abused in magazine and television advertising -- in a way that recaptured their virgin essence, making them, when Pat sings them, not cliches at all but statements of a deeply felt, unconflicted belief." I'm pretty sure that Adams and I reach different conclusions about politics and religion, but it's clear that, in this book and in his art, he speaks what I believe, that humanity is deeper than all our economics and policies and creeds.

Chou En Lai's toast (sung originally with a silvery yet warm tone by remarkable baritone Sanford Sylvan), is one of Adams' slow rides across a vast landscape, with text that mirrors his method: "We have begun to celebrate the different roads that led us to this mountain pass, this 'summit' where we stand. Look down, and see what we have undergone. Future and past lie far below, half visible..." This aria succeeds in a way that's like no other piece of music I know, sweeping us up in pulsing and colorful accompaniment, long lines of melody, and gradual build up to a vision of "paths we have not taken yet" where "innumerable grains of wheat salute the sky," and a toast to a time when our children's children will look back on this moment. I get chills thinking about it even now.

And to what end?

Alice Goodman and John Adams give Chou En-lai this line in Act Three, never answered, never developed: "And to what end?
From Thomas May's book THE JOHN ADAMS READER, I see that the collaborators did not work well together, and the librettist Alice Goodman was miffed most. But I give her a lot of the credit for what's right in this show. She tried, she said, to represent each character "as eloquently as possible" in the way that the character would want to be portrayed.

As a writer and composer myself, I'm inspired by these two ideas: Let the characters speak eloquently for themselves; give the music movement and shape like the landscapes we drive past.

Text adapted from...
• Musical Landscapes (07/2006)
• a reflection on John Adams' memoir Hallelujah Junction Thanks to and from John Adams (10/2008)
• Nixon's Voice (10/2015)]
• See other articles about John Adams and other composers who share a certain catch-all label at my page The Minimalist Zone
• See an article ostensibly about Santa Fe that's really about how I learned to love traditional operas, too.