John Adams's groundbreaking 1987 opera, Nixon in China, received what the Associated Press calls its "long-overdue premiere" at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City last night, with the composer making his Met debut on the podium and Peter Sellars making his Met directorial debut as well. Earlier this week, Nonesuch reissued the Grammy-winning 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.

"Air Force One finally landed on the stage of the Met," opens the Associated Press review of last night's premiere, "and so did perhaps the greatest American opera of the last quarter-century." Reviewer Mike Silverman sees the Met production of Nixon in China as "a testament to its enduring power."

Silverman describes the work's music this way:

Adams' score bursts with youthful energy and inventiveness. He uses elements of "minimalism," the insistent repetition of themes with only slight variation. But his style is far more varied and sophisticated than any label can convey, and he moves seamlessly from somber choruses and expansive arias to jazzy saxophones and triumphant brass fanfares.

He then goes on to list some of "the glories of Goodman's libretto."

While he does find room for improvement in the production, Silverman insists: "Whatever its shortcomings, however, this is a Nixon worth seeing."

Read the complete review and check out a great photograph of cast members James Maddalena (Richard Nixon) and Janis Kelly (Pat Nixon) with Trisha Nixon Cox, the daughter of Richard and Pat Nixon, at abcnews.go.com.

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While last night's Met premiere may have been nearly a quarter century in coming, New York Times classical music critic Anthony Tommasini suggests that "the opera and the production may have come to the Met at just the right time to comprehend the continuing resonances of this audacious and moving opera."

He goes on to describe as "inspired" Sellars's suggestion of Nixon's trip to China as the subject of Adams's first opera. Then, noting how closely the current production adheres to Sellars's original conception, Tommasini poses the rhetorical question: "When you get something right at the start, why change it?"

Tommasini says of Richard Nixon that "Maddalena inhabits the character like no other singer" and of Pat Nixon that "Janis Kelly, in her Met debut, was wonderful." As for the composer at the podium, the Times critic writes: "As a conductor, Mr. Adams brought an obvious command of the metric complexities of the score to his performance. I like that he never pushed the music and tried to tease out its mysticism and hazy harmonic richness."

Read the complete review at nytimes.com.