Adams - Nixon in China

ONP Bastille, Tuesday April 4 2023

Conductor: Gustavo Dudamel. Production: Valentina Carrasco. Sets: Carles Berga, Peter Van Praet. Lighting: Peter Van Praet. Costumes: Silvia Aymonino. Richard Nixon: Thomas Hampson. Pat Nixon: Renée Fleming. Zhou Enlai: Xiaomeng Zhang. Mao Zedong: John Matthew Myers. Henry Kissinger: Joshua Bloom. Chiang Ch'ing: Kathleen Kim. Nancy Tang: Yajie Zhang. Second Secretary: Ning Liang. Third Secretary: Emanuela Pascu. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

Photos: Elisa Haberer, ONP

Any Adams is a rarity in Paris, but I did see a memorable Nixon eleven years ago at the Châtelet, all the more memorable for now being freely available, in full, on YouTube, and in particular for Sumi Jo's vigorous portrayal of the Chairman's wife. So I might have liked a chance to see another of his operas, but I suppose for his entry into the Paris Opera's repertory, Nixon in China it had to be. And the company certainly pulled off a remarkable coup, casting Thomas Hampson and Renée Fleming as the Nixons, in a strong production with a strong cast all round.

Valentina Carrasco's staging is more politically engaged than either the Châtelet one or, as far as I know, Sellars' original. Some key features are:

Ping-pong

Older spectators will recall that, prior to Nixon's visit, ping-pong tournaments had helped thaw relations between the US and China. The basic set is a sports hall, with different sports marked out on the parquet in red, white and blue lines, and mobile stands of plain, stepped wooden seating. During the opening choruses, the hall is filled with row upon row of blue ping-pong tables. A red team with black hair (the Chinese) confronts a blue team of (American) blonds. As the plane approaches, the teams players perform a swirling ballet with the tables, which settle into place to frame an airport runway, marked by a red carpet. The plane, an American eagle with glowing eyes, lands, and the US party emerge from the rear of the stage.

Later in act one, the sports hall becomes the Great Hall of the People. The banquet and toasts take place in front of another ping-pong match. Mao himself braggingly challenges Kissinger - both of them got up in colourful silks, like boxing champs - and wins 99 to next-to-nought, triggering, between the rival teams, a perfect storm of ping-pong balls, prefiguring the snow to come. The last act takes place against a backdrop of ping-pong tables, overturned at all angles and suspended above the stage.

 

Snow

As I said, a veritable hail of ping-pong balls at the end of act one is wryly recalled by snowflakes, or snowballs, that, in act two, gently shift and hover (on moving gauzes) above the action. Not a major theme of the production, but one that adds to the poetry of Pat Nixon's act two scenes.

Period photography and newsreels

Projections on scrims overlay gruesome press photography and newsreel footage on the action, reminding us that discussions, banquets, toasts and visits went on against a background of both the Vietnam War and the Cultural Revolution. A key video, shown during the set change between acts two and three, helps us understand some details: in an excerpt from a 1979 documentary film From Mao to Mozart: Isaac Stern in China, a former director of the Shanghai conservatory recounts graphically how he and his colleagues were persecuted, imprisoned and abused. In act one, Mao's study - a vast, labyrinthine library, every wall lined with books - rises, and while the protagonists talk (and Kissinger plays with a globe, like Chaplin in The Great Dictator), in a ruddy glow, underground boilers are stoked with books. Grainy photos of violent 'struggle sessions' exposing class enemies, are projected over the set. A grey-haired violinist is dragged in. His violin is torn from him and smashed; he's beaten up against the wire fencing facing the audience. With the 1979 video, we comes understand that this was the conservatory director, imprisoned and abused underground. Over the act two ballet, we follow US planes in aerial footage as they bomb and burn Vietnam.

Propaganda and the fake

Before that, under the gently bobbing 'ping-pong snow', Pat Nixon, a picture of well-mannered naivety, in a red coat and black boots, visits a shop, a school, a commune and model pig farm, none of them real. The pigs, like most of the audience at the later ballet show, are cardboard cut-outs, the shop, school and commune 'Potemkin' fakes: photos pasted over the sports-hall stands, wheeled into place by extras. Pat soliloquises (nuzzles and and even plays hide-and-seek) with a friendly red dragon against a garden idyll printed on posters: one of the production's most captivating moments.

Dragon and eagle

As traditional dance was banned during the Cultural Revolution, perhaps we should see the production's festive red dragon more as a figment of Pat Nixon's (and by extension, the West's) imaginary fantasies of China (all dragons, pagodas, lanterns and firecrackers). After nuzzling Pat and chasing her round the illusory gardens, it returns, at the end of the opera, to 'confront' the American Eagle which had flown the US party in, nose to nose, before the lights go out.

The directing is fairly detailed, developing definite, distinct and somehow amiable characterisations of the leading couples, the Americans in particular but even, by the end, the tetchy Chinese; less so Zhou Enlai or Kissinger. The weaknesses show more in amateurish chorus movements (no choreographer is listed), and in act three which, instead of offering us something new and striking to end the work, seems to run out of steam, recycling things that, other than Mao's Hawaiian shirt and Kissinger's Mickey Mouse slippers, we've already seen. We could have done with a magical, novel coup de théâtre to send us home beaming even more broadly, but even so, we had a very good evening (and, so I read, there was no booing at all for the production team on opening night, a sure sign of a popular hit).

Musically, we could hardly have hoped for a better cast. Joshua Bloom, as Kissinger, was strong and clear, but the score doesn't give him much chance to shine. As Zhou, Xiaomeng Zhang has a lovely, smooth, lyrical baritone voice, though with the kind of rapid vibrato at the top I'm personally not keen on - but that's just me. Both Kathleen Kim and John Matthew Myers were also beautifully lyrical when the score allowed, understandably more comfortable in the quieter episodes than when stretched to their absolute limits, as they sometimes naturally were.

Thomas Hampson was also put to the test somewhat, but his voice remains instantly recognisable, the familiar elegance and nuance is still there, he portrayed a suitably blustering yet sentimental Nixon, and he formed a wonderfully convincing couple with the radiant Renée Fleming. Pat Nixon will surely go down as one of her greatest roles (in my view, alongside the Countess in Capriccio). I had never seen her looking so natural and at ease on stage before, and the beautiful voice sounded fully intact. Her act two soliloquy was a highlight of the evening and she was undoubtedly the star of the show.

I don't know why Adams wanted this work amplified, but he's the boss. Act one was marred for me by 'tinny' sound and exaggerated sibilants spitting and hissing over a persistently loud orchestra. After the interval, either my ear had adjusted to the amplification, or the technicians had somehow improved it, as the singing was more audible and sounded more natural - thank goodness. The technicians could, however, do nothing about Dudamel, who played loud all evening, bashing away with no noticeable regard for the singers' needs. As someone commented on a French forum, he doesn't seem to realise he has a cast on stage in front of him, and apparently doesn't give a damn. Does he never go up into the hall to check the balance? Is he even interested? (A friend who knows much better than I tells me the issue is actually Adams' score, but I don't remember the same difficulties at the Châtelet where, by the way, there was no amplification.)

Here, Renée Fleming sings to the dragon:

And here, Wenarto is the wife of Mao: