I think in the third act both Nixon and Mao realise their two countries are literally worlds apart, and they are clinging to their own pasts and values. I first went to China a very few years after Nixon's visit and one had to pinch oneself to absorb the overwhelming cultural differences. I get the feeling that, although Nixon should have been prepared for this, he absolutely was not, and nor was his wife. In the opera they are sometimes naive in the way they respond to what they are seeing and hearing. I really enjoyed the work, I wish we had heard a bit more about Kissinger and what he was doing behind the scenes while, as I remember, he was having an 'attack of appendicitis' to cover up his absence. It is fascinating history.

It always surprises me how, during periods of tiredness after a stressful event, memories of long ago events surface in one’s mind, unbidden. That’s how Act 3 strikes me. The main characters all seem to be mind-wandering about past successes and failures. Some telling phrases: Nixon – ‘It’s no good. All that I say is misconstrued’ or ‘…the Jap bombers had given us a miss’. Mao – ‘I am no one’. ‘I am unknown’. 'Revolution is a boys' game'. We are reminded about the chasm in experiences that separates the Long March Chinese leaders – ‘It was the time/that tasty little starlet came/to infiltrate my headquarters’ or ‘We saw our parents’ nakedness;/Rivers of blood will be required/to cover them’ from the middle class Americans ‘…those damned slipcovers’ or ‘They called it “Nick’s Snack Shack”’. And of course their rambling reflections humanize these iconic cartoon-like historical personalities. Don’t we all want to make our world a better place in some small way? Don’t we all strive to do good…to achieve a state of grace in our lives? Which is why, for me, Nixon’s final words – ‘This is my way of saying thanks’ and Chou’s final words…the last of the opera…are so touching – ‘Outside this room the chill of grace/lies heavily on the morning grass’.

Saw the show last night and I think Sue sums up the third act nicely. It's a complex libretto, often poetic and hard to make coherent sense of at a first hearing. But the staging and design in the third act reinforced the idea that each character was retreating into his/her comfort zone -- getting into their jammies, tuning into their own comfortable narratives on their own TV sets, maybe half-asleep. I loved it.

I saw last Saturday's performance. I thought the production itself was terrific and the orchestra and chorus were in fine form. I have to admit, though, that I didn't care for the opera itself. In the absence of much action, the libretto was extremely important, but I found the singers were constantly drowned out by the orchestra, and the Surtitles just didn't make up for the fact that I couldn't hear what they were singing about. Pity. Personally, I prefer "Doctor Atomic" - it would be wonderful if the COC would mount this Adams work, with Gerald Finley in the title role. Any chance of this happening?