Auckland Arts Festival’s Nixon in China, co-produced with Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and New Zealand Opera, cements why John Adams has created an operatic survivor.

Setting Alice Goodman’s superlative libretto, the composer has achieved an extraordinary feat of theatrical reconciliation. There’s much muscle-flexing grandeur here, worthy of a minimalist Meyerbeer.

Wagnerian climaxes suit on-stage political ceremony; thrills are visceral when the music is taken on rushing streams of hypnotically cross-hatched rhythms. Yet the Nixons, Mao Zedong and his wife Chou En Lai and Henry Kissinger emerge from history as human beings. [More] 

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United States President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 to meet with Premier Chou En Lai and Chairman Mao Zedong was a momentous occasion, far-reaching in its consequences for East-West relationships, the future political economy of Communist Russia and the course of the Vietnam War.  Although there were no specific negotiated outcomes from Nixon’s visit, those who watched from afar on television recognised the cultural exchange as inherently high drama. 

The narrative arc of Nixon In China, the opera which follows this brief Chinese foray by Nixon, stretches from the arrival in China of the President and his wife Patricia aboard Air Force One, accompanied by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and a number of functionaries, to their subsequent departure to return to America a few days later. We accompany the Nixons as if we are flies on the wall, overhearing bits of public and private speech as they meet and greet, attend rallies, are taken walkabout with an ever-present security entourage, dine at a grand banquet, and retire for the night.

The opera was first performed in 1987 in Houston, Texas and has subsequently been presented throughout the world. This two-night season in Auckland Town Hall is the New Zealand premiere, presented by Auckland Festival in association with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and New Zealand Opera, triumphantly directed by Sara Brodie.

The musical score by composer John Adams is something of a hybrid. Throughout the almost three hours of the performance, there is an underlying bed of circling, cycling, mutating minimalism reminiscent of Philip Glass. Rising up and over this bed, and at times eclipsing it altogether, is a richly dense symphonic mix of musical styles from many periods.  

From time to time there’s a snatch of melody, such as Gershwin amongst a collage of American jazz, and some Strauss, but mostly we are immersed in full-on surround sound. The time signatures are extremely complex, especially when the layers start to accumulate, and conductor Joseph Mechavich seems deceptively relaxed, given the immensity of the task he is handling.

The APO is in brilliant form, definitely a force to be reckoned with. There are a dozen guest musicians added to the usual complement, and the brass section has been boosted to thirty for this event, with saxophones a particular feature. The musicians are exultant in what I think of as ‘full onslaught mode’ when everyone seems to be playing at the loudest, fastest possible pace. They are quietly intent in minimalist interludes built around the extended plucking of strings, and there are occasional exquisite solos; of particular note, Robert Ashworth’s viola and Andrew Beer’s violin.

Poet Alice Goodman’s English language libretto was developed through painstaking research, and reading it is a rewarding follow-up to experiencing the opera. The text involves everyday asides, conversation between the parties, and questions of clarification as often as it does political pronouncements or poetic musings from the Chinese leaders.

On the choral side of things, despite their powerful voices, the nine singers in principal and supporting roles wear microphones: logical given that they are often singing over onslaught mode music. However, even with amplification, the words tend to get smudged, and in quieter moments, the amplification seems distinctly unnecessary.

Chou En Lai (Chen-Ye Yuan) is a quietly watching statesman, now confined to China, and he expresses his concerns for the best future for his country.  He seems to fulfill a kind of meta-narrator role here, and his quietly assured singing always rivets attention on him. 

The aged and now faltering Mao Zedong (Simon O’Neill) is at times a roaring bombast, but mostly an old man recalling his past glories. He has some intriguing exchanges with Nixon about the particular qualities of Kissinger, of whom he comments from his Red Book, “In the dark all diplomats are grey”.  

Chiang Ch’ing, aka Madam Mao (Hye Jung Lee), is a prowling tiger, her own power still ascendant. The range and force of her voice in her electrifying solos rousing the supporters to her cause are a dramatic highpoint. 

Richard Nixon (Barry Ryan) is an excellent communicator, his delivery sure, his diction legible, crisp and clear, and though wife Pat (Madeleine Pierard) has a powerful voice, she seems a very uncertain woman most of the time, and is almost wistful about her own life while on her walkabout meeting factory workers and children.

In the room where Mao is cared for by nurses, there is a feeling of conflicted affection between him and his estranged wife; when the Nixons are together, there is a sense that his life matters more than hers.

The principals are supported by 24 performers of the Freemasons New Zealand Opera Chorus, in fine voice. They set the opening scene for us, entering down the centre aisle of the Town Hall and clustering at the front of the auditorium, quietly singing ‘The Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points of Attention’ while waiting for Air Force One. After welcoming the American dignitaries, they pass through the orchestra and climb up into the choir stalls where they merge into the background unless required to be visibly present.  

A large number of extras supplement the chorus, though only visually, as Media, Red Army Guards, and citizens of Beijing, clustering at the sides of the choir stalls or sitting in the Dress Circle blocks nearby.

With the orchestra and chorus in place, there is very little room for the actions of the cast, other than a narrow promenade at the front of the stage, which becomes by turns the podium for delivery of official speeches, the Nixon’s hotel room, the banquet table where Nixon and Chou En Lai sit, the various Beijing locations where Pat Nixon visits, and so on. A large video screen above the choir loft is used, however, to provide an additional illusion of spaciousness, with projected imagery – clouds, flags, symbols, landscapes, portraits, posters, building facades, falling snow, and animated silhouettes – adding a layer of significance to important events and giving a sense of life going on beyond the podium (design and execution by Louise Potiki Bryant).

The production falters only in the last part of Act 2 with a somewhat incoherent sequence of events in which a dancer in pointe shoes (Amelia Chong), dressed as if she is a member of the cast of the Chinese revolutionary ballet The Red Detachment of Women, is subjected to abuse and a whipping from a large florid man in a blue smoking jacket and his beefy henchman. She flees and hides amongst the chorus, only to be found again, and abused again, to Pat Nixon’s horror, but is subsequently given a rifle and a pistol by a male soldier (Clinton Fung Yik), and ends by wildly shooting the pistol before being arrested.  This replaces the original version where the Nixons et al attended a performance of the ballet in question, which would be impossible to present in the space available here.

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