Mao Zedong in Houston: when opera makes history

Political opera is not a modern invention.

Politics are—each in their own way, of course—

by Monteverdi,

by Handel, Beethoven's

,

by Weill or

by Strauss, but the epithet can also be applied to works that can be classified in principle in other categories, such as

by Mozart,

by Verdi,

by Wagner,

by Puccini,

by Pfitzner or

by Hans Werner Henze.

Several of the American John Adams' operas are political, however, as an intrinsic quality, almost as their raison d'être.

This is the case of

, which is about to be seen for the first time in our country and which is even led by two heads of state

but the same can be said of

(on the famous hijacking of the

and the murder of a Jew at the hands of four Palestinian terrorists in 1985, which gives rise in the script to reflections on the everlasting Arab-Israeli conflict that bothered both sides not a little) or by Dr.

, a title that refers to one of the fathers of the Manhattan Project and the first atomic bomb, the physicist Robert Oppenheimer.

They do not deal with legendary events, or events distant in time, and we do not see mythological, literary characters or figures from the past on stage, but rather crucial events of the 20th century are presented to us with their real protagonists, still very close (some are still alive). at the time of the premiere and still today, more than half a century after Nixon's trip to China) and with very direct consequences in our lives, which in their day dominated the front pages of the newspapers or which opened the television newscasts all over the world. world: no wonder the first two were dubbed "CNN operas."

More information

John Adams, composer: "I wanted to turn the collective unconscious of the United States into music"

The three creations were born driven by the same artistic triumvirate: the composer John Adams, the stage director Peter Sellars and the librettist Alice Goodman, although the disagreements between the musician and the writer caused the latter to stand out halfway through the gestation of

.

All three of them are Americans, one of the threads that connect them is their university studies at Harvard, where one of

also did them , Henry Kissinger, whose operatic alter ego does not fare particularly well and whom Goodman makes him mention. , not by chance, to his prestigious

As soon as he begins his first meeting with Mao Zedong: the former Secretary of State will be a centenarian in just over a month and John Adams entrusts him, very realistically, with the bass register.

A student of Seamus Heaney at Harvard and married until her death to the great British poet Geoffrey Hill, Goodman had little choice over the subject or literary style of their first three-way collaboration: "Opera has to be written in couplets and will headline

”, imposed his friend Peter Sellars, the original architect of the idea.

And the resulting script—in couplets, of course, and a paragon of wit and dramaturgical efficiency—is among the best in the genre and deserves to be read on its own merits apart from the music.

It contains memorable phrases: “History is our mother and this is the best way we have to honor her”, sings Nixon in his first meeting with Mao, who answers: “History is a disgusting sow;

if by chance we escape from its jaws, it ends up on top of us”, where there is a hidden reference to a phrase by James Joyce in his

: "Ireland is the old sow that eats her litter."

Pat Nixon, after confessing his humble origins in his great second act aria, exclaims: "Let routine blunt the edge of mortality."

Before the trip, Nixon had already described it as a "historic mission" and in his first handshake with Zhou Enlai together with the

, the presidential plane, tells him that "the eyes and ears of history have captured each of the gestures" that both have just carried out, although he is thinking more of the American television channels that broadcast the meeting in prime time, when “the dog and the grandmother fall asleep”, and in the votes that the meeting could bring him a few months later (“This is an election year”, the old fox Zhou shrewdly recalls, and shortly after Mao ironically promises him his vote, because he supports "the man on the right"), hence the music that the composer writes for him is not bombastic, but suitably trivial: Nixon exclaims the word "News" up to twelve times (

), on the same note, to add immediately afterwards that "they have a kind of mystery".

He thinks that the world is watching him and what he is living now is, in his country, the great news of yesterday.

Richard and Pat Nixon in a scene from the production of 'Nixon in China' by John Fulljames that can be seen at the Teatro Real in Madrid.Camila Winther (On loan from Teatro Real)

In his first opera, Adams does not deviate from the unwritten rules of the genre, such as everyone expressing themselves in a common language (here, English, to which Benjamin Britten had managed to give Peter

a

a letter of an operatic nature), even though it is not credible that Mao or his wife (although his three secretaries, who serve as echoes) sing in that language: Ganbei

Zhou's closing toast is the only exception.

Pat Nixon's long intervention in the second act is the closest thing to a conventional aria, including the interaction between voice and instruments (oboe and trumpet, above all), practically dissociated until then, with the significant absence of bassoons in the orchestral template and horns, but with four saxophones (very useful when Adams introduces jazzy inflections) and a

with almost ubiquitous keyboard.

It is in the third act, when the opera leaves the public sphere to delve into the privacy and psychology of its protagonists on the last day of the official trip, when the different instruments of the orchestra break away from the group (violin solos, viola, cello and tenor saxophone included) to assert here and there his individuality, much curtailed until then.

The music is faithful to the main aesthetic postulates of minimalism, with its constant interweaving of blocks, which poses to its performers, more than purely technical difficulties, the challenge of counting —music bars and silences— during the incessant repetitions: any loss of concentration can cause a catastrophe.

The complexity does not usually derive from the rhythms either, almost always clear and elemental,

but of the overlapping metrics and the setbacks that have occurred.

The choruses, for example, are consistently homophonic and the intervals are clear and easily approachable.

In the solo parts, Adams resorts on several occasions to falsetto in the male voices, thereby giving them an ironic touch, as when Nixon says he has almost no words ("

”)

to express the joy that stepping on Chinese soil has caused her, or when Mao maliciously refers to the Green Berets, the special forces of the US army.

The greatest vocal acrobatics are reserved for Chiang Ch'ing, Mao's wife, a coloratura soprano who frequently has to climb into high C (and occasionally into C sharp and even D) and who unequivocally calls her guests “ sons of bitches” (

) when she dances with Mao in the third act and intends to counteract the superiority complex of the Americans, firmly convinced that they are the best at everything, dance included.

Significantly, the last word is reserved, in the most emotional and intimate passage of the work, for Zhou Enlai, perhaps as "old and weak" (he died only four years later) as the last Haydn confessed to feeling, which seems to arouse sympathy of librettist and composer alike: "Outside this room, the chill of grace has settled strongly on the morning grass."

At this point, the opera becomes almost classical, softening the rigid constructive procedures of minimalism, softening itself, and proclaiming itself the daughter of a secular tradition, making several of its most characteristic features its own.

Real video footage and operatic onstage recreation of Pat Nixon's aria from the second act of 'Nixon in China'.Camilla Winther |

The Royal Danish Opera

John Adams, with a first and last name identical to those of the second president of the United States, seemed predestined to come face to face with one of his most cunning successors, the one nicknamed Tricky Dick, who easily won the November 1972 elections, but at the

time that his ascension to the Calvary of Watergate still awaited him

It premiered at the Houston Opera in 1987 and its takeoff was as sudden as that of a NASA space rocket, because theaters around the world quickly wanted to make it their own, unaccustomed to seeing real people represented on stage. , easily identifiable by all viewers.

The Paris Opera has just unveiled a new production directed by Valentina Carrasco on March 25 and it is now when, in the "archival" and enormously truthful production by John Fulljames, it finally arrives in our country willing, of course, to make history.

'Nixon in China'.

John Adams.

Royal Theatre.

Madrid.

From April 17 to May 2.

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