In the final act, as the characters retire to their bedrooms to muse about the past, Mr. and China on a far different footing from what it was in 1972 or 1987, the opera's cultural-difference subtext now seems telling. Herold and Tamara Mumford were fierce and excellent as Mao's three secretaries. Richard Paul Fink was amusing as Henry Kissinger, a small, comically villainous role (he doubles as the ballet's wicked landowner). As Madame Mao, Kathleen Kim was a ball of fire, hurling out the stratospheric ostinatos of her tantrum aria 'I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung': She's a seducer and killer who will do anything to cement her position. Her impassioned 'This is prophetic!' evoked her homespun roots and admiration for simple virtues, but she also betrayed some impatience with Nixon in the final scene, when he reminisces about his military service in the Pacific, stories she has heard before. Soprano Janis Kelly was a splendid, bright Pat Nixon. Russell Braun was a too-reserved Chou En-lai (or, more commonly, Zhou Enlai in Pinyin), singing his lyrical music elegantly but playing the premier as an enigmatic figure rather than a more assertive bridger of cultures. Sellars had him barely able to walk, wracked with physical spasms and prone to narcolepsy, but it didn't stop him from being sexually serviced by one of the secretaries during the final act. Tenor Robert Brubaker handled Mao's high tessitura impeccably, creating an indelible image of a ruthless, wily fighter, despite his age and decrepitude. James Maddalena, who was the original Nixon, sounded constrained in his opening aria, the jerky, triumphant 'News has a kind of mystery.' But he relaxed as the evening progressed and delivered a nuanced portrayal of the president as a complex man-eager, paranoid, sentimental and calculating. Adams specifies amplification for the singers, but the sound design flattens the voices.Ī thinly veiled satire of fascism, nevertheless holds out hope that the hearts of tyrants may be changed. Act I was overly loud and brash he found more transparency for Pat Nixon's scene in Act II and the bedtime meditations of all the characters in Act III. Adams, making his house debut as the opera's conductor, let the orchestra rip. By contrast, Mark Morris's choreography for 'The Red Detachment of Women' is, in this context, hilariously over the top, matching the lush, Hollywood-type scoring with an elaborate ballet of female warrior cadres in pointe shoes battling their oppressors, a scene that turns into a melée suggesting the Cultural Revolution. Ingalls's lighting evokes the harsh cold of a Beijing winter and the public glare of the banquet hall. Dunya Ramicova's costumes are similarly unadorned, with all the Chinese women in drab, desexualizing trouser suits only the blond Pat Nixon is peacock-like in red and purple. A huge cutout of Air Force One descending from the flies (accompanying one of the great orchestral moments of the opera) and a giant portrait of Mao represent the public faces of these world leaders their private scenes take place in small, plain beds.

It's a comic moment, but it makes a serious point: They are interfering in a culture they don't understand.Īdrianne Lobel's set has a stark, handmade look. At the ballet performance, the Nixons, distressed by the luridly enacted violence of a landowner against a peasant girl, step in. Mao, backed by three female secretaries who echo his pronouncements, speaks in riddles and epigrams, and when Nixon tries to get a word in, he is ignored or rebuffed. The motionless, expressionless massed crowd (the powerful Met Opera Chorus), declaring 'The people are the heroes now / Behemoth pulls the peasant's plow,' presents the Chinese people as a menacing force.

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