The opera has achieved this on its own merits.
Today, Nixon is firmly established as a major work in the operatic repertoire-and not just the American or modern. Nixon, with it’s judicious and stimulating influences of Wagner, Stravinsky, Bruckner, and Philip Glass, reconciled the visceral grip of minimalist techniques with the emotional range and power of romanticism, and made Adams the public face of American classical music in a way that only Aaron Copland had been previously. In his memoir, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, Adams describes an epiphany he had while listening to Wagner moved by Wagner’s sincerity and desire to effect the listener’s emotions, Adams composed his breakthrough orchestral masterpiece, Harmonielehre. It was also a way to dismiss the notion that it might belong in the classical tradition, for no other reason than the crimes of newness and Americanness.īy 1987, Adams was established as a neo-romantic composer, using repeated minimalist patterns as rhythmic underpinning and decoration for rich harmonic movement and long, lyrical lines.
The implication was that the opera was thin, ersatz, temporary. Nixon in China, an HGO commission, spawned the phrase “CNN opera,” which was a condescending pejorative meant to belittle the piece as nothing more than a temporary sensation in the continuous froth of the news cycle, and cable news’ particular need to chase after the obsessions of the moment. In those thirty years, every question about the opera has been answered. Was Nixon even an opera? If so, was it proper for opera to touch on current events? There was even the inside-game question of whether composer John Adams was even a minimalist anymore, what kind of music he was making, and if it could be considered a new stylistic direction.įriday night, Spano will be in the pit, leading a Houston Grand Opera production of Nixon that will celebrate the 30th anniversary of that celebrated company premiere. When Nixon in China was heard in its world premiere at Houston Grand Opera in 1987, the air, conductor Robert Spano recalls, was filled with arguments. Chen-Ye Yuan is Chou En-Lai in Houston Grand Opera’s production of John Adams’ “Nixon in China.” Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera.
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