UK Edition
Review
Nixon in China, Scottish Opera, review: this subtle, intelligent modern opera is still entrancing
Who would have dreamed that the 1972 summit talks between President Nixon and Chairman Mao could have provided the source for one of the most subtle, intelligent and entertaining operas of the last forty years? But that is the trick pulled off by composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman in a work - premiered in Houston in 1987 - that swiftly enjoyed global success in Peter Sellars’ wonderfully witty and imaginative original production.
Alas, John Fulljames’ new staging doesn’t bear comparison. In a setting designed by Dick Bird that shows a warehouse lined with aisles of archival boxes, it’s intermittently clumsy in execution and visually unappealing.
Minions in black scurry around anonymously; the boxes serve for props: the effect is monochrome. Projected onto the walls is documentary footage of the episode alongside slides of Maoist propaganda and American newspaper headlines, ineptly positioned by cast members from a desk at the side of the stage.This is a device borrowed from the director Katie Mitchell, and it’s very irritating and distracting. An image of Boris Johnson meeting Nicola Sturgeon may have caused a cynical guffaw in Glasgow, but it is entirely irrelevant to the opera.
Yet nothing can get in the way of the libretto’s exploration of the truth behind the myth and its unsentimental excavation of the humanity in Nixon and China’s head of government Chou En-lai (Mao is a secondary figure, and his wife remains pure villain), or the inventiveness in Adams’s unique combination of musical ingredients - Wagner, Mussorgsky, Richard Rodgers, Glenn Miller, Nat King Cole, and Chinese kitsch, all blended in the minimalist mixer. Here is a far stronger and richer operatic score than anything cooked up by his more popular contemporary Philip Glass, and this performance highlighted the expressive range of Adams’s vocal writing, both solo and choral.
Eric Greene was perhaps too sympathetically affable as Tricky Dicky, but he sang with compelling warmth, as did Julia Sporsén as his bewildered wife Pat. Nicholas Lester made a noble Chou, Mark Le Brocq coped manfully with Mao’s agitation and Hye-Youn Lee was mistress of Madame Mao’s coloratura hysterics. Nobody was helped by their make-up or the uncertain efforts to make their characters resemble their originals.
Joana Carneiro’s conducting got off to a bumpy, anxious start - one could sense the orchestra’s cautious counting of the bars, but soon everything relaxed and flourished. The chorus was imposing, the amplification so tactful as to be imperceptible. This is a modern opera of enormous charm, and despite the production’s shortcomings, I was entranced.
One further performance on Saturday (0844 871 7647); then touring to Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, 27 and 29 February (0131 529 6000). Scottishopera.org.uk