The Metropolitan Opera production of John Adams's Nixon in China continues this weekend, following this week's Met premiere. "When John Adams's opera Nixon in China had its world premiere in 1987, it was provocative, edgy, audacious," says the Washington Post. "Twenty-four years later, it's come to the Metropolitan Opera and, along the way, become a Modern Masterpiece." The Huffington Post calls it "a thrill."
The Metropolitan Opera production of John Adams's Nixon in China continues this weekend with a Saturday night performance, following the Met premiere of the work on Wednesday night. The composer is conducting throughout the run, in his Met debut on the podium; director Peter Sellars is making his Met debut as well.
"When John Adams's opera Nixon in China had its world premiere in 1987, it was provocative, edgy, audacious," writes Washington Post classical music critic Anne Midgette in her review of Wednesday's performance. "Twenty-four years later, it's come to the Metropolitan Opera and, along the way, become a Modern Masterpiece."
While Adams's "young, antic score" features many of the minimalist signatures of the composer's early work, with ties to the music of Philip Glass, it "is also rife with operatic quotation: lots of Strauss and Wagner mixed in with the driving repetitions, giving ironic emphasis to big moments."
It's music, says Midgette, that "holds up well. And when I think about all of the faults in the other operas that I have no problem embracing in the standard repertory, I can only second what seemed to be the opinion of the audience: that it is a happy thing when a contemporary work comes full circle and takes its place among them."
Read the complete review at washingtonpost.com.
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The Huffington Post gives the production of Nixon in China three-and-a-half stars out of four. Reviewer Michael Giltz also references Wagner, but in a different light. "Catching its premiere at the Met—with Adams himself as conductor, no less—was a thrill," writes Giltz. "The piece might be 24 years old, but it still feels shockingly modern on the stage where I'm used to seeing Puccini and Wagner."
Of the opera's cast, the reviewer says that "Nixon (sung as always by James Maddalena) was alive with history, aware always of the import of the visit. Maddalena embodies him perfectly, managing to sing somehow with a sense of Nixon himself." You can hear Maddalena's earlier performance in the role in the Grammy-winning original cast recording on Nonesuch, recently reissued and available in the Nonesuch Store.
"Nixon in China entered the repertoire long ago but the Met has performed it at a fortuitous time in a solid, sometimes gorgeous production," Giltz explains. "John Adams' opera has mined an historic moment with a marvelous balance of riveting images, stirring music and enough humanity for the major characters to give a sense of the real people who rode these titanic changes into the spotlight."
Read the complete review at huffingtonpost.com.
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To pick up a copy of the original cast recording in a newly redesigned and specially-priced three-CD set, featuring the complete libretto and new notes by Adams and Sellars, along with the original liner notes by librettist Alice Goodman and the late Michael Steinberg, head to the Nonesuch Store.
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