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Review
It’s here, at last. As long as five years ago the internet was sprouting rumours that Marin Alsop would be recording Nixon in China. Now those of us who consider it among the most important operas of the 20th century finally have two recordings to argue between.
Nixon in China didn’t just see John Adams perfecting his distinctive ‘Mahler-meets-minimalism’ idiom; it also yanked the art form into the mainstream by depicting familiar, living characters on the opera stage for the first time. Many were shocked that it wasn’t a satirical hatchet job: Adams and librettist Alice Goodman interweaved historical events with surrealist episodes and deeply personal fictionalised musings from the 1972 visit’s main players. All, with the possible exception of Henry Kissinger, come out of it rather endearingly.
Edo de Waart’s recording of that original 1987 Houston Grand Opera production, made a year later with pretty much the same forces, has been the only available until now. Several new productions have been seen since, including that captured here, staged by Opera Colorado in June 2008.
Marin Alsop might not topple de Waart off his default top-spot, but she does provide a strikingly different performance that forms a worthy counterpoint to his. First of all, the story is more vivid: generally superior diction means words are audible, as are on-stage happenings and audience reactions.
Baritone Robert Orth makes a compelling Nixon. His voice has something of the West Wing about it – a natural American twang and gloss, with added expressive elasticity. Countering that is the equally authentic baritone of China-born Chen-Ye Yuan as Chou En-lai, cleanly and earnestly sung. Soprano Maria Kanyova makes the utmost of the beautiful, innocent but strong-willed music Adams writes for the First Lady.
The capturing of the chorus is often too distant, particularly in the ‘Cheers’ passage that ends the banquet scene. That’s a disappointment. But Alsop makes up for it with orchestral detail. Rather than the warm sheen of de Waart’s orchestra, here you hear the machinery of Adams’s writing: bright, alert, lucid, occasionally thin, but brilliantly textured. --Andrew Mellor
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Review
''[The] performance, brilliantly conducted by Marin Alsop and delivered by a strong cast led by baritone Robert Orth in the title role... Alsop, a proven master of Adams style both early and late, led a dynamic performance... Conducting the Colorado Symphony, she shepherded her forces nimbly.'' --San Francisco Chronicle concert review
''Nixon is a young man's opera loud, louder, loudest. But Alsop balances rhythmic drive with careful pointers to Adam's later, more lyrical achievements...Robert Orth gives a remarkable sung impression of the president's speaking voice.'' --BBC Music Magazine
''Alsop lets you hear the workings of the music.... Adams's score hasn't dated a bit. It s come up gleaming anew. And at budget price, Naxos's Nixon really is one for our times.'' --Classic FM Magazine Classic FM CD of the month
''Nixon is a young man's opera loud, louder, loudest. But Alsop balances rhythmic drive with careful pointers to Adam's later, more lyrical achievements...Robert Orth gives a remarkable sung impression of the president's speaking voice.'' --BBC Music Magazine
''Alsop lets you hear the workings of the music.... Adams's score hasn't dated a bit. It s come up gleaming anew. And at budget price, Naxos's Nixon really is one for our times.'' --Classic FM Magazine Classic FM CD of the month
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Just imagine - it is just little more than twenty years since John Adams premièred his opera Nixon in China. What a sensation it was then - politicians still alive were on the opera stage, caricatured, even cartooned, and all the same they were real persons taken from a history only seventeen years ago! And now a new fresh recording after the pioneering Nonesuch disc, establishing it as a classic, an opera to be put beside, let us say, Fidelio, A Masked Ball, Tosca, Madame Butterfly and War and Peace!
Yes, what a grandiose opera it is! Adams' minimalist music, more Glass-like than I remember it from the brilliant TV-performance, but much diversified, varying its tonal themes regularly and with an intensifying effect, enhancing them to sudden triumphs of dramatic expression. This is really an overwhelming new form of dramma in musica, a new creation functioning very well as advanced music theatre, a great artistic revelation.
And what a rich and sophisticated libretto Alice Goodman wrote, well worked-out, with unsuspected variations and sometimes such a high level of purport that you are grateful to have the whole text in front of you. Humor as in the first act, terror as in the second act, and a wonderful meditative ending with Chou En-Lai's resigned monologue.
And this recording, made by Opera Colorado, with musically and dramatically glorious singers and an expressive and perfectly disciplined chorus-and-orchestra under Marin Alsop, is a masterpiece that will, I am sure, be considered as the standard disc for a very long time to come. As for rendering modern American music, with all the typical American styles from folk music and musical to minimalism, from jazz to pop music, Marin Alsop is absolutely unsurpassed today, and she knows precisely how to mingle the perfectionism that minimalism demands with a warm humanism. And in all its disillusion and relativity, this is, believe it or not, an opera and a recording of humanist dignity and elevation.
So the "Nixon" of Naxos is not to be missed. It will be a good companion to return to many times, in order to discover incessantly new dimensions in that masterly piece of work by John Adams and Alice Goodman.
Yes, what a grandiose opera it is! Adams' minimalist music, more Glass-like than I remember it from the brilliant TV-performance, but much diversified, varying its tonal themes regularly and with an intensifying effect, enhancing them to sudden triumphs of dramatic expression. This is really an overwhelming new form of dramma in musica, a new creation functioning very well as advanced music theatre, a great artistic revelation.
And what a rich and sophisticated libretto Alice Goodman wrote, well worked-out, with unsuspected variations and sometimes such a high level of purport that you are grateful to have the whole text in front of you. Humor as in the first act, terror as in the second act, and a wonderful meditative ending with Chou En-Lai's resigned monologue.
And this recording, made by Opera Colorado, with musically and dramatically glorious singers and an expressive and perfectly disciplined chorus-and-orchestra under Marin Alsop, is a masterpiece that will, I am sure, be considered as the standard disc for a very long time to come. As for rendering modern American music, with all the typical American styles from folk music and musical to minimalism, from jazz to pop music, Marin Alsop is absolutely unsurpassed today, and she knows precisely how to mingle the perfectionism that minimalism demands with a warm humanism. And in all its disillusion and relativity, this is, believe it or not, an opera and a recording of humanist dignity and elevation.
So the "Nixon" of Naxos is not to be missed. It will be a good companion to return to many times, in order to discover incessantly new dimensions in that masterly piece of work by John Adams and Alice Goodman.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
'Nixon' dates back to 1987. It has been previously recorded by Edo De Waart and the Orchestra of St. Luke's Nixon In China which I regard as a triumph, and it is that recording that I've grown used to over the years. This fantastic (I use the word advisedly) opera is a exploration of character and form; And for the record, I've no particular liking for Nixon, or his minions and I reserve particular disdain for the name of Kissinger and would happily refer people to The Trial of Henry Kissinger. I cannot recommend this work highly enough.
Adams wanted to write an 'heroic' opera; Peter Sellars recommended the Nixon idea; Alice Goodman wrote the excellent libretto. That this is such a triumph is a bit of a mystery. Act One opens with serenity, flowing into a melancholic song 'Soldiers of heaven hold the sky', followed by an almost pop-song like chorus 'The people are the heroes now'. There then comes a mighty invocation of an aeroplane coming into land 'Spirit of '76', the formal greeting of Chou En-lai and Nixon ushers in the emergence of pomposity. Nixon's self-aggrandizement comes to the fore in his aria 'News has a kind of mystery'. Throughout the opera, Adams never lets the veil of sincerity drop, to the extent where it is not clear whether he is being sincere or not. This only adds to the fun.
And so things continue. The first scene of Act 2 is a sensitive portrayal of Pat Nixon's involvement in the affair; Scene 2, Act 2 gets very sinister indeed; the evening's entertainment is a barbaric stage act 'The Red Detachment of Women'. Act 3 is a single scene of exhaustion, mis-understanding and impatience.
Adams' music is wonderful throughout with many rhythmic twists and turn, good solid melodies, intricate subtleties. I play (rather than listen) to this opera 2 or 3 times a month and have done so now for a good 8 or so years and I'm still very much enjoying it. I do occasionally listen to it properly, but it's over 2 1/2 hours!
This new (live) recording actually improves on certain aspects of the original - certainly rhythmically, as well as making some of the melodic material more prominent. This does not mean that it is an overall improvement. Much of the minutiae is lost and the dynamics are compromised (most noticeable in the approach of the spirit of '76 in the interlude of the same name). I can believe that some people will passionately prefer one recording to the other and with good reason; I, however, am enjoying this new recording much more than I thought I would.
Adams wanted to write an 'heroic' opera; Peter Sellars recommended the Nixon idea; Alice Goodman wrote the excellent libretto. That this is such a triumph is a bit of a mystery. Act One opens with serenity, flowing into a melancholic song 'Soldiers of heaven hold the sky', followed by an almost pop-song like chorus 'The people are the heroes now'. There then comes a mighty invocation of an aeroplane coming into land 'Spirit of '76', the formal greeting of Chou En-lai and Nixon ushers in the emergence of pomposity. Nixon's self-aggrandizement comes to the fore in his aria 'News has a kind of mystery'. Throughout the opera, Adams never lets the veil of sincerity drop, to the extent where it is not clear whether he is being sincere or not. This only adds to the fun.
And so things continue. The first scene of Act 2 is a sensitive portrayal of Pat Nixon's involvement in the affair; Scene 2, Act 2 gets very sinister indeed; the evening's entertainment is a barbaric stage act 'The Red Detachment of Women'. Act 3 is a single scene of exhaustion, mis-understanding and impatience.
Adams' music is wonderful throughout with many rhythmic twists and turn, good solid melodies, intricate subtleties. I play (rather than listen) to this opera 2 or 3 times a month and have done so now for a good 8 or so years and I'm still very much enjoying it. I do occasionally listen to it properly, but it's over 2 1/2 hours!
This new (live) recording actually improves on certain aspects of the original - certainly rhythmically, as well as making some of the melodic material more prominent. This does not mean that it is an overall improvement. Much of the minutiae is lost and the dynamics are compromised (most noticeable in the approach of the spirit of '76 in the interlude of the same name). I can believe that some people will passionately prefer one recording to the other and with good reason; I, however, am enjoying this new recording much more than I thought I would.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
I have long admired John Adams's music - He is a worthy successor to the Cage/Glass/Reich school of repetitive rythmic music and, dare I say, he has improved and expanded the genre and left behind the tiresome and irritating aspects.
This performance of "Nixon in China" is no exception mainly thanks to the peerless Marin Alsop who is able to work her magic on the singers and the Cclorado Symphony orchestra ( as she has with the Bournemouth Symphony).
Its amazing that Adams and his librettist Alice Goodman were able to fashion such an exciting opera out of what might seem to be an unpromising subject. The enigma of Nixon is revealed, his paranoia and subsequent fall from grace contrasting with his yearning for detente with China and Russia. The music and singing from the principals and the chorus is consistently dramatic and stimulating and it gets better with each hearing.
I hope that we'll soon see a new production here in the U.K
This performance of "Nixon in China" is no exception mainly thanks to the peerless Marin Alsop who is able to work her magic on the singers and the Cclorado Symphony orchestra ( as she has with the Bournemouth Symphony).
Its amazing that Adams and his librettist Alice Goodman were able to fashion such an exciting opera out of what might seem to be an unpromising subject. The enigma of Nixon is revealed, his paranoia and subsequent fall from grace contrasting with his yearning for detente with China and Russia. The music and singing from the principals and the chorus is consistently dramatic and stimulating and it gets better with each hearing.
I hope that we'll soon see a new production here in the U.K
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Excellent interpretation of modern classic
Having seen 'Nixon In China' performed at the Coloseum in London a few years ago I have been searching for a copy of this magnificent opera for years. Read more
Published 28 days ago by Ged Meheran
John Adams: Nixon in China
I gave it as a presnt so I just have to trust it's being enjoyed. I like the music of John Adams so it would have been a nice present to me too!
Published 4 months ago by Ravman
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