“This is prophetic,” sings Pat Nixon, the wife of American President Richard Nixon, during their highly publicized visit to China in 1972 — the height of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Her dreamy aria, one of the most poignant in John Adams’ 1987 opera “Nixon in China,” is an especially preemptive commentary on the future of mankind. Her words were written by Alice Goodman, a key part of the team that produced this work, along with Peter Sellars, the director who initiated the project.
For the first time, the Hungarian State Opera presented “Nixon in China” (in English) on September 22 (the first of three performances). It was staged in the company’s Eiffel Arts Studio’s Locomotive Hall using an experimental theatre design style. There, they occupied the entire vestibule of the remodeled train station with its high ceiling and giant black locomotive in the center. Cannily, the presence of the decommissioned train perfectly suited the sound score of this opera’s repetitive accompaniment energy.
Directed by András Almásy-Tóth, with set designer (also lighting and video) Sebastian Hannak, and the moto-perpetuo Minimalist score conducted by Gergely Vajda, the production’s unusual use of the Eiffel building involved a completely new arrangement for the positions of several segmented stages, audience and orchestra placement. An extensive tech crew on high risers behind the audience masterminded the video elements: live cameras onstage, as well as scenes piped in live from other rooms.
Because of the great length of the hall, the singers needed to wear body mikes and needed a second conductor perched within the tech crew. Three large screens for images, videos, and language subtitles were hung from the ceiling above the long train, and opposite the audience. In addition to many images and examples of ancient Chinese art and artefacts, photos of colorful rugs and Sino-Communist propaganda posters, this exotic rearrangement of the theatrical orthodoxy re-oriented us to the Orient.
Suggested by the score’s ominous orchestral beginning, Pat Nixon’s nostalgic prophecy (“I foresee a time when … [we can] let the eternal plan resume…”) continued to weave its sentiment throughout the story line. From the arrival of the Nixons in Peking (now Beijing) for meetings with Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Premiere Chou En-lai, to its surprising and unlikely denouement: instead of the usual grand finale, it was a sobering soul-search expressed by all three world leaders. The opera’s presentation is loaded with facts and figures, back-stories, and disquieting scenarios (Pat witnesses a brutal whipping of a girl in the middle of an historic dance sequence, and she jumps onstage to try to rescue the girl) that attested to the need to sort out major cultural differences.
Soprano Klára Kolonits excelled as Pat Nixon, who was her husband’s best friend, loyal wife, and unpaid advisor. In addition to her skilled and beautifully controlled singing, Kolonits injected the compassionate element into her husband’s challenges as he swung between egotistic exaltation and the brink of personal disaster. As President Nixon, baritone Károly Szemerédy made an exuberant and impressive debut in this vocally demanding role of a complex world leader. His opening aria “News, news!” was delivered with a level of gusto and éclat that he was able to maintain throughout the opera.
As Mao Tse-tung, tenor Zoltán Nyári deftly approached the character’s high tessitura that Adams envisioned: “to be the Mao of the huge posters and Great Leap Forward; I cast him as a heldentenor.” As Mao’s wife, Chiang Ch’ing, soprano Rita Rácz fully deployed her upper octaves in the person that Adams described as „not just a shrieking coloratura, but also someone who in the opera’s final act can reveal her private fantasies, her erotic desires, and even a certain tragic awareness.” Azat Malik, as the aging Chou En-lai, looked a bit young for the role, but managed to project a world-weary impression, nonetheless, in the opera’s final wistful aria: “Death will be a novelty … come heal this wound.”
This production was marked by a stunning amount of high-quality female vocal power. Mao’s three secretaries: Diána Ivett Kiss, Anna Csenge Fürjes, and Lusine Sahakyan, sang numerous trios with exemplary precision and tonal allure. A dynamic women’s chorus, following a delicious Wagner-tinged musical episode, delivered a vibrant performance of a joyfully syncopated marching song, accompanied by bubbling saxophones. Because the visuals were a beguiling aspect for so many of the women, the costume department outdid itself. The stunning and ornate clothing designs by Richárd Márton were as dazzling as the singing. The Hungarian State Opera Orchestra soldiered valiantly through the kind of score that if you blink, you miss a beat. Kudos!
The first few years of reviews for this opera, for which Adams had introduced his own version of the mid-century Minimalist genre that had taken over American contemporary music (Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, et al.), were rocky to say the least. Most critics pronounced it a flop or a copy-cat, and dismissed it as a passing fancy. However, looking at both the U.S. domestic and global political events that occurred directly after the Nixons’ highly lauded 1972 visit to China, one can see a clear delineation of hubris-to nemesis, particularly for Nixon who resigned in disgrace only two years later.
Maestro Vajda says in the program notes: “In my opinion, the time for this opera has come – and not only in Hungary but all over the world – to be relevant again as we are all unwitting passengers of the current geopolitical roller coaster for more than a decade.” This vivid Hungarian production presents a brilliant, musically fascinating, multi-level experience for everyone to grasp the psychology and sociology behind 20th century China vis-à-vis the West, and through innovative musical and rhetorical lenses.
Two more performances of the Hungarian State Opera’s “Nixon in China” are September 29 and October 5.
