To fly to China, President Richard Nixon (R, 1969 — 1974) went in Air Force One, the Spirit of ‘76, SAM 26000. This was a fact that Nixon in China librettist Alice Goodman and composer John Adams must have been aware of in their research for the opera. They wanted to depict Nixon and his delegation arriving in Beijing and debarking from the plane.
Here’s how Richard Wagner would have dealt with it: we don’t see the airplane at all. Instead, other characters sing about how the airplane is neighing or braying furiously as it lands offstage, then the characters who came on that plane debark offstage and then walk onstage.
Alice Goodman chose not to do that.
(A jet is heard approaching, touching down, and taxiing across the runway. As The Spirit of’76 comes into view, slowing to a stop, Premier Chou En-lai and a small group of officials stroll out to meet it, casting long shadows in the pale yellow light. A ramp is drawn up to the hatchway. After a pause the door opens and President Nixon stands in the opening for a instant, then begins to descend the ramp, closely followed by the First Lady in her scarlet coat. When the President reaches the middle of the ramp, Premier Chou begins to clap and the President stops short and returns the gesture, according to the Chinese custom. He reaches the bottom step and extends his right hand as he walks towards the Premier. They shake hands)
CHOU
Your flight was smooth, I hope?
NIXON
Oh yes, smoother than usual I guess. Yes, it was very pleasant. We stopped in Hawaii for a day and Guam, to catch up on the time. It’s easier that way.
At the 1987 premiere by the Houston Grand Opera, after the chorus sings “The People are the Heroes,” a few extras wheel a staircase onto the stage, and we see a flat board shaped and painted to look like Air Force One descend perfectly vertically.
It looks cheesy, like a high school production, but it helps tell the story: President Nixon and his wife and their entourage arrive in China by airplane. I didn’t see that production in person, I watched it on YouTube — that video should be cued up to just before Chou En-lai (baritone Sanford Sylvan) shows up on the airfield to wait for the American delegation to land.
James Maddalena as President Richard Nixon (R, 1969 — 1974) in the Metropolitan Opera production of Nixon in China.
That production doesn’t rely solely on Richard Nixon (baritone James Maddalena) singing “this bare field outside Peking” to tell us that this is taking place somewhere in China, but away from a big city. There are large banners with one Chinese character on each, and some leafless trees in the background. When Maddalena reprised the rôle of Nixon at the Metropolitan Opera, the production was very similar to the premiere production (a clip from the hit song “News” was the very first I ever heard of this opera).
Now compare that to the production at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 2012. I like how the Chinese soldiers look up at the sky and turn in unison, as if they’re all tracking the same object in the sky. Two men wheel in a staircase, but this staircase, while it does the job, does not look like it was meant for the pomp and circumstance of the occasion. I also watched this production on YouTube — I tried to cue this one up to the same point in the story, just before Chou En-lai (baritone Kyung Chun Kim) shows up on the airfield.
Then this thing that looks like a ski lift comes down, with Pat Nixon (soprano June Anderson) and her husband Richard (baritone Franco Pomponi) seated on it. The production relies on Nixon describing the flight as “smoother than usual” to convey that he came by airplane, and not floated down like Zeus.
But the problem with this is that then when we see Henry Kissinger (bass Peter Sidhom), it’s not clear where he came from. Was he already in China, as part of the advance party? Well, you could argue that it’s not a very important detail to the story.
Casting Franco Pomponi as Nixon makes me think about casting John Cena as Donald Trump — that should only be done to lampoon Trump, and not in earnest. Pomponi looks more like Clark Kent (Superman’s secret identity) to me, but his singing as Nixon is without flaw, in my opinion.
What I really want to talk about here today, though, is the set design, lighting, costuming and blocking. You know the opera is Nixon in China, the location is right there in. the title, but there’s nothing in the black and blue set to tell you that this is taking place in China.
The lighting is good enough for you to see the actors and how well they’re costumed, but it gives the impression that Nixon arrived at night. According to the Nixon Library, President Nixon met with Chou En-lai at roughly 11:30 a.m., local time, on February 21, 1972. So the sun should be fairly high up on the sky. This is not a detail that I would have looked up after watching either of the productions with Maddalena (though the Met production does look darker).
One could argue that a bare and dark, minimalist production makes sense for the work of a composer who is considered a minimalist. It doesn’t make sense for an opera like Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, also involving an American in an Asian country. Soprano Cait Frizzell criticized a recent production of that opera in which the black and blue set gives no indication that this is taking place in Japan.
On her YouTube channel Scores Unstitched, Frizzell declares that “opera is in its ugly era,” with sets that look like the opera company is having a “budget crisis.”
In the following video she gives several examples, including one in which she had to slither for practically the whole duration of a modern opera for reasons that still elude her. To try to explain this, she looks at dollars and cents in percentages. Even with the constraints on opera companies, she still holds out hope that they will turn things around and make productions that are as pleasant to look at as they are to listen to. I recommend opera fans watch the whole 28-minute video.
The open thread question: Of the opera productions you have seen in person, or watched on DVD or YouTube, which one do you think is the most effective in its stage design, lighting, costuming and blocking? And which one really left you scratching your head, confused?
