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Take an in-depth look at Nixon in China with the following articles and essays.
By James Robinson
As a graduate student in Composition and Theory at the University of Minnesota, I was part of an unforgettable discussion in the Composition Seminar that followed the first television broadcast of Nixon in China. We were an opinionated and serious lot, usually found lazily agonizing over the merits of the twelve-tone system versus Neo-Romanticism, or trying to outdo each other with clever excuses for skipping performances of landmark 20th-century works or newer compositions that would doubtless enhance our knowledge and prospective careers.
The idea for Nixon in China belonged to the American stage director Peter Sellars who brought the composer John Adams, and the librettist, Alice Goodman together. After researching back issues of news magazines, tapes of the television newscasts, and once she had made clear what happened on each day of the visit, Goodman met with Adams to simplify the events and construct the opera.
After its premiere, Nixon in China received mostly mixed if not negative press feedback. The New York Times critic Donald Henahan reported that the Houston Grand Opera production “turned out to be a Peter Sellars variety show, worth a few giggles but hardly a strong candidate for the standard repertory. . . . Despite interesting poetic ambitions, the text remains at heart the material for a good-natured skit, not the political or social satire one might expect.” The latter comment seems a bit off the mark in light of the fact that Adams and Goodman made it clear from the outset that they had no interest in producing a satire.
Nixon in China is one of the major operas of the 20th century and, along with Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach, is considered one of the cornerstones of American Minimalist music.
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