The Collins Guide To Opera And Operetta. Michael White

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       Principal Characters

      Richard Nixon, American president

      Pat Nixon, his wife

      Mao Tse-tung, Chinese statesman

      Henry Kissinger, American statesman

      Chiang Ch’ing, Mao’s wife

      Chou En-lai, Chinese statesman

       Synopsis of the Plot

      Setting: China; February 1972

      ACT I On their arrival in Beijing, Nixon and his wife are greeted by Chou En-lai. Nixon feels that this visit is of great symbolic significance – as much as the first moon landing, in fact, and he also expresses his pleasure that their arrival coincides with peak television viewing time in America, thus ensuring him maximum publicity. Then the President, Henry Kissinger, Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai each offer their individual views on world issues, during which the contrasting ideologies and philosophies of East and West become evident, and the first act closes with a banquet.

      ACT II Pat Nixon is taken to visit a commune and the Summer Palace and later joins the President, Mao, Chou En-lai and Mao’s wife, Chiang Ch’ing, to watch a performance of the contemporary ‘political ballet’, The Red Detachment of Women. This depicts a courageous group of women soldiers successfully battling against an unscrupulous landlord (played by Henry Kissinger). When the ballet ends, Chiang Ch’ing presents her account of the Cultural Revolution and how she sees her own place in history.

      ACT III On the last night of the visit Nixon, Pat, Mao, Chiang Ch’ing and Chou En-lai are each seen in separate beds. Nixon and Mao reflect on past events in their lives and on their struggles to succeed. Nixon’s wartime memories centre on the acquisition of his own hamburger stand while Mao’s most vivid memories are the struggles of the Revolution. It is left to Chou En-lai to unite the past with the present by asking the question common to all political ideologies: ‘How much of what we did was good?’, which brings the opera to a close.

       Music

      Nixon in China is a mixture of exhilarating upbeat rhythms, pounding through the endless repetitions that make up a Minimalist score, and moments of reflective poignancy in which potentially cardboard characters really come to life. It isn’t easy to show recent historical figures with credibility on an opera stage, and the mere idea of Nixon and Mao singing to each other raises an assumption that the tone of the piece will be satirical. But no. Despite forays into the surreal, this is straight-laced all-American drama which if anything veers toward Romanticism – with appropriately luscious music. Even the synthesiser which Adams insinuates into the orchestral textures is given a romantic treatment.

       Highlight

      A brilliantly energised orchestral sequence called ‘The Chairman Dances’, which has entered the concert repertoire as a stand-alone piece.

      Did You Know?

      Recommended Recording

      Sanford Sylvan, James Maddelena, Chorus and Orchestra of St Luke’s/Edo de Waart. Nonesuch 7559 79177-2. The only recording to date.

Samuel Barber

      (1910–81)

      A Hand of Bridge (1953)

       Vanessa (1957)

      Anthony and Cleopatra (1966)

       Barber was an American who looked to Europe and the melodic abundance of European late-Romanticism for inspiration. Born into a WASP-ish East Coast family, he was one of the first students at the new Curtis Institute in Philadelphia where he studied singing as well as composition. Opera wasn’t a preoccupation, and his few stage works have tended to be overshadowed by concert scores like the Violin Concerto, the lyrically nostalgic scena for voice and orchestra Knoxville, Summer of 1915, and above all by the deathless Adagio, which must have featured on the soundtrack to more feature films and TV documentaries than anything since Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. But at Curtis he had met another young composer called Gian Carlo Menotti who was supremely a creature of the theatre. They went on to spend most of their lives together, and the first two of the three Barber operas were collaborations in which Menotti wrote the words. A Hand of Bridge doesn’t actually require many words: it lasts nine minutes and is no more than a brilliant little diversion. Vanessa, with its darkly Ibsenesque plot, is far more substantial, while Antony and Cleopatra is grander still, written for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Vanessa