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NIXON IN CHINA

Long-beach-opera-nixon-in-china-image

 

What: Opera by John Adams, presented by Long Beach Opera

Where: Terrace Theater of the Long Beach Convention Center,

300 East Ocean Blvd., Long Beach

When: Sunday, March 28, 2010 at 4 p.m.

Tickets: $45-$95

Information: (562) 432-5934, www.longbeachopera.org

 

 

By John Farrell

 

“Nixon in China” is big, bold, exciting, moving, sometimes outrageous. (Did we mention exciting? Let's do it again.)

 

It's the kind of opera you expect from a big opera company, with more than 100 performers, delightful and unexpectedly effective sets and costumes and enough music, minimalist some of it, lyric and effective all of it, to hold any audiences attention for its three our length.

 

It was produced by Long Beach Opera.

 

Frankly, it is time to reset our expectations. LBO has long been called “feisty,” “innovative,” “the small company with big ambitions.” It's time to admit, after more than thirty years and 100 productions, including, despite Los Angeles Opera's contention to the contrary, the first “Ring” in the Los Angeles area, that it is more than the little company that could. Under Artistic and General Director Andreas Mitisek, who conducted Saturday night, it has become an important force, perhaps the single most important force, for contemporary opera in Southern California.

 

“Nixon in China” is a shining example. It was produced by LAO in 1990 but has been singularly neglected here since, though it has many productions around the world, including performances in Vienna and Verona conducted by Mitisek.

 

Neglected no longer. Mitisek has brought together a fabulous cast, including John Duykers, who created the roll of Mao Tse-Tsung, and plenty of artists from LBO's recent performances. He brought in Long Beach Ballet, forty chorus members, a forty-three piece orchestra. It all adds up to one of the best and brightest operas in recent memory, a work that deserves to be heard again. (If you haven't heard it, or want to hear it again, a final performance Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. is still available.)

 

Richard Nixon is a controversial figure in America history. His trip to China in 1972 is a seminal moment in American history, and Adams opera, the first major work to take recent history and treat it with as much seriousness as ancient history, is as important as it is imaginative. With a poetic libretto by Alice Goodman, it explores the inner world of six people at one of the most important moments in their lives.

 

Michael Chioldi is Nixon, the communist-hating president who decided to open China, and his voice is as clear as his opinions are vague. Duykers is Mao, a philosopher now in his old age. Suzan Hanson is Pat Nixon, whose simplicity and middle-American virtues (though she was born in California) shine as she meets children and pig farmers on her tour of China. Ani Maldjian, with a fierce, fiery performance, is Chiang Ch'ing, Mao's wife. Robert Gomez is Cho En Lai, Chinese Premiere. Kyle Albertson is Henry Kissinger, the man who made the meeting between the two men possible. All sing with powerful, clear voices, aided by a microphone system and with Goodman's words project on a screen above the stage. Ariel Pisturino, Leslie Anne Cook and Peabody Southwell are Mao's three secretaries.

 

Wilhelm Holzbauer designed the sets, which were produced from his plans. The airplane Nixon and company arrive on is not as big as it was in the original production, but it will do. Mao and Nixon meet in a room filled with chairs twice life-sized that move as the men discuss their lives and their end-of-life goals.

The final act is after the ultimate banquet, with Kissinger drunk Madame Mao reading a newspaper and Pat and Dick Nixon looking back on their lives together. Only Co is concerned with whether what they did will actually bring good.

 

Peter Pawlik directs the cast with a willingness to allow each character a chance to speak. Mitisek conducts the sometime lush score with passion and effective clarity. Chorus master Henry Venanzi controls his charges with energy and a willingness to let them be individuals, even in the most controlled situations.

 

“Nixon in China” is an opera which tells one version of an important point in American history. It also reveals what opera can and should be: entertaining and comic and tragic and insightful all at once. One performance this Sunday is still to come, and if you care about opera and about Long Beach Opera you will be there.

 

John Farrell is a Long Beach freelance writer. More of his stories can be found at www.byjohnfarrell@typepad.com

 

 

 

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