| Friends reunited: Nixon and Mao return to sing mutual praise |
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 “As we look at this wall… we do not want any walls of any kind between peoples,” said US President Richard ‘Tricky Dicky’ Nixon, standing on the Great Wall of China, during his momentous visit to the People’s Republic in 1972, in what was hailed as a diplomatic triumph for Sino-American relations. After years of hostility and mistrust between Washington and China, the historic handshake between Nixon and Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) signaled a significant step in the two countries’ thawing relations.Inspired by such an epochal event, American composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman joined forces to create an operatic tour de force – Nixon in China. After making its stage première in the US in 1987, the powerful politico-musical production finally made it to London in 2000. And now, six years later, this original piece of musical theatre returns, more rambunctious and relevant than ever, revived by the English National Opera (ENO) at the London Coliseum. John Adams reflects on his East-meets-West musical masterpiece: “Nixon in China was the first opera ever to use a staged ‘media event’ as the basis for its dramatic structure… and was perfect for Peter Sellars’s dramatic imagination. [He] showed a deep understanding for the way in which people in power managed to keep themselves there. He understood brilliantly how dictatorships on the right and left throughout the century had carefully managed public opinion through a form of public theatre and the cultivation of ‘persona’ in the political arena. Both Nixon and Mao were adept manipulators of public opinion. The famous meeting brings these two complex figures together face to face, in a dialogue that oscillates between philosophical sparring and political one-upmanship. The set for the original production took its cue from Communist Chinese iconography. Reds, blues and greens were bright and unmodulated, imparting the look and feel of old propaganda literature from the Cultural Revolution. The arrival of the Nixon delegation in Act I featured an immense replica of Air Force One, from which Nixon, [his wife] Pat and [Henry] Kissinger descend to be greeted by a long line of identically clad Chinese officials. The second act ballet, ‘The Red Detachment of Women’, a study in agitprop dance, theatre and music, was based on a political ballet from the period of the Cultural Revolution that had been shaped and ideologically massaged by Madame Mao (Mao’s wife Jiang Qing), [and] featured the same absurd images of ballet dancers, dressed in the uniforms of the People’s Revolutionary Army and brandishing rifles.” Adams also places great emphasis on the roles of the two principal women - Pat Nixon and Jiang Qing. Both wives of politicians, he says, they represent the yin and yang of the two alternatives to living with someone immersed in power and political manipulation. “Pat was the ideal, the quintessence of ‘family values’, a woman who stood by her man (preferably a foot or two in the background), embraced his causes and wore a gracious, if stoic, smile. Jiang Qing began her career as a movie actress and only later enlisted in the Party, accompanying Mao on the grueling Long March, and ultimately became the power behind his throne, the mind and force behind that hideous experiment in social engineering, the Cultural Revolution. In the music composed for these two women I tried to go beyond the caricature of their public personae and look at the fragility of each other’s relationship to her spouse. In Act II we see each in her public role: Pat is the perfect diplomatic guest, being treated to a whirlwind tour of the city and ‘loving every minute of it’. The shrill, corrosive Jiang Qing interrupts the ballet to shout angry orders at the dancers and sing her credo of power and violence, ‘I am the Wife of Mao Tse-tung’. But in the final act, the focus of both text and music is their vulnerability, their desperate desire to roll back time to when life was simpler and feelings less compromised. Indeed, all five of the principals are virtually paralysed by their innermost thoughts during this act. In the loneliness and solitude of his or her own bed, no one can avoid the feeling of regret, of time irretrievably lost and opportunities missed. It falls to Zhou Enlai (Chou En-lai), the only one with a modicum of self-knowledge, to ask the final question: ‘How much of what we did was good?’ ” Nixon in China took Adams two years to complete, a process which he described as similar to being ‘pregnant with the royal heir’, given the attention focused on it by the media and musical community. Amid a crescendo of hype, its opening was met (surprisingly) with a flat and anti-climactic reception, and was sardonically dismissed by the critics. “That was it? That was Nixon in China?” wrote Donal Henahan in The New York Times in 1987, after what he deemed to be “…the most heavily publicised and shrewdly promoted new opera of this decade.” “Nixon in China,” he continued, “..comes to life chiefly through its grab bag of clever scenic effects, and by senior-revue jokes at the expense of quasi-historical characters who one might have thought were beyond caricature. A cartoonish Mr. and Mrs. Nixon [portrayed as] objects of mild, campy fun, are innocents abroad, a confused Rotarian couple swept up in incomprehensible events. Miss Goodman's episodic libretto has seriocomic potential, though in performance it was only intermittently understandable despite the composer's reliance on a prosaically chanted recitative style. What comes of it all is a visually striking but coy and insubstantial work.” However, it was far better received in London in 2000. With its electrifying score, poetic libretto and thrilling choreography, wrote The Daily Telegraph, “…no praise can be too high.” The Observer, too, called it: “A breathtaking opera that transforms one moment of history into a timeless myth.” So there. And now, Nixon in China appears to have more relevance than ever. Hu Jintao recently made his first official visit to the US as President of China, during which he shook hands with President Bush, and discussed… well, money. But there must have been some momentary exchanges of artistic merit in there somewhere, surely. So, are we soon to see President Hu leaping across a ‘McDonaldised’ stage, singing: “I’m lovin’ it!”? Possibly. But until then, Nixon in China more than meets the bill. London Coliseum St. Martin's Lane Trafalgar Square London WC2N 4ES 5 Performances Only – June 14, June 17, June 23, June 29, July 06 From £10 Pre-performance talk with Michael Walling – June 23 £3 More information at: www.eno.org |
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