There can be few, if any, operas which feature a grand gathering of table-tennis players. Bizaare that may be, it’s not so unreasonable if you’re aware of the link between the world table-tennis championships held in Japan in 1971 and Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China the following year – a circumstance prompted, in part, by a rapprochement between the American and Chinese team. After decades of political stalemate, this game-changing event (no pun intended) is celebrated in John Adams’s first operatic venture, a work premiered in Houston, Texas in 1987. Since then, it has taken nearly forty years for Nixon in China to reach Opéra Paris. (Peter Sellar’s original production appeared in Bobigny, Paris in 1991.)
This revival of Valentina Carrasco’s acclaimed 2023 staging draws its rationale from the ping-pong diplomacy between capitalist US and communist China that would bring its two leaders together. From the outset and at the front of the stage, Carrasco links the
political manoeuvring of two international figures with a game of mimed table-tennis. The curtain lifts to reveal an 80 strong chorus of players (Chinese team in red, US team in blue) who mime a tournament on the stage, likened to a sports hall. To signify the arrival of Air Force One and the American president, a giant eagle (with menacing talons and glowering eyes) hovers over the stage, while at the Great Hall of the People, a toast to patriotic fraternity brings a heavily one-sided match between Chairman Mao and the US security advisor Henry Kissinger. And, in case we hadn’t got the point, Act 1 closes in a flurry of ping-pong balls hurled across the stage by the entire chorus.
Amusing as all that is, Nixon and Mao’s first meeting is in a spacious book-lined study where contemporary issues are discussed. Below them is a basement where confiscated books are fed into a furnace, and those opposed to the repressive regime are being tortured. While the libretto refuses to take sides over political differences, one is in no doubt as to Carrasco’s standpoint when she prefaces Act 3 with an excerpt from a 1979 documentary, From Mao to Mozart, outlining the persecution of musicians during the Cultural Revolution.
If her concepts are memorable (the ping-pong tables find their way into Act 3 suspended above the stage at curious angles), the singing is no less impressive, if at times, variable. All but one of the principal’s reprise roles from the production’s first outing. Caroline Wettergreen, replacing Kathleen Kim, is outstanding as the malevolent Madame Mao and gives an exceptional “I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung” – rising to those stratospheric notes as if it were child’s play. She has no difficulty projecting, regrettably not something that could be said of Renée Fleming’s Pat Nixon who, in a touching moment during her shopping trip, plays hide and seek with a friendly dragon. Her Act 2 soliloquy is pretty enough and she’s every inch the diplomat’s wife, fully inhabiting her role and standing beside Thomas Hampson armed with fixed smile radiating affability. Yet the voice never quite soars over the orchestra even when all those pulsing rhythms are tamed. Most impressive is her evident affection for Thomas Hampson’s suave Nixon, the chemistry truly believable when she turns to him in Act 3 with “Yes, dear, I think you told me that”, an aside suggesting how ordinary the couple are behind the presidential responsibilities. And Hampson is in his element, urbane and polished vocally, making light of his big ‘News’ aria with no sense of strain when confronting the upper reaches of this high baritone part.
Joshua Bloom and John Matthew Myers as Henry Kissinger and Mao Tse-Tung are both reliable, Bloom making the most of Alice Goodman’s elliptical words, and an oily Matthew Myers bringing eloquence to his high wire tenor role. I was less convinced about a woolly-sounding Zhang Xiaomeng as the philosophically inclined Chou En-lai, but, his world-weary portrayal finally drew my sympathy when he asks “How much of what we did was good?”
Credit must go to Kent Nagano for steering his Parisian players with admirable control in a complex score where metre, rhythm and texture vary constantly. Always sensitive to balance, he favoured long lyrical lines over propulsion yet was alert to the score’s horizontal / vertical axis. Ideally, rhythms could have been crisper, but there was no denying the orchestral thrill with the arrival of Air Force One, when four saxophones added their distinctive colouring. Judging from this performance, Opéra national de Paris confirms Nixon in China as a 20th century classic, and no doubt this production may in time enjoy classic status.
David Truslove
Nixon in China
Music: John Adams
Libretto: Alice Goodman
Cast and Production Staff:
Richard Nixon – Thomas Hampson; Pat Nixon – Renée Fleming; Mao Tse-Tung – John Matthew Myers; Chou En-lai – Xiaomeng Zhang; Henry Kissinger – Joshua Bloom; Madame Mao, Chiang Ch’ing – Caroline Wettergreen; First Secretary – Aebh Kelly; Second Secretary – Ning Liang; Third Secretary – Emanuela Pascu.
Director – Valentina Carrasco; Designer – Carles Berga; Costumes – Silvia Aymonino; Lighting – Peter van Praet, Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Paris & Chœurs de l’Opéra national de Paris; Conductor – Kent Nagano.
Opéra Bastille, Paris, 17 March 2026
All photos © Vincent Pontet