Artists'
Views of Nixon: On Stage
"Nixon in China"
"Nixon's Nixon"
Movie clips
can only be viewed from computers on the Wellesley College
campus.
Nixon in China, with music by John Adams and libretto by Alice Goodman, was commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Houston Grand Opera and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The work premiered in Houston in 1987, in a production directed by Peter Sellars, with choreography by Mark Morris. The opera focuses on the historical meeting in February 1972 between Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, with Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai.
February 1972: Nixon arrives in Peking with his wife Pat and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to visit Chairman Mao Tse-tung and Premier Chou Enlai. In the first scene of Act I, which focuses on the men of the story, Premier Chou Enlai introduces Nixon to a group of Chinese officials, and together Nixon and Chou review the honor guard passing by. The libretto excerpted here shows Nixon’s preoccupation with his place in history and the symbolic value of this historic trip to China. As Chou attempts to capture Nixon’s attention to observe the events at hand, Nixon slips into a reverie about the countryside he and Pat saw on their flight from Shanghai. He alludes to the Apollo 11 moon landing of 1969 and the plaque that American astronauts left there, which read, “We came in peace for all mankind.”
Composer
John Adams has remarked, “To
my mind [librettist]Alice Goodman’s poem is to me one of the great
as-yet-unrecognized works of America theater. Her words are a summary,
an incantation of the American experience, and her Richard Nixon is our
presidential Everyman: banal, bathetic, sentimental, paranoid. Yet she
does not deny him an attempt, albeit couched in homely metaphors of space
travel and good business practice, to articulate a vision of American
life.”
http://www.earbox.com/sub-html/comp-details/nixon-de.html <25 July
2005>
Click here for
more on John Adams.
"Nixon's Nixon"
"For
just over five years, Nixon had been the most powerful man in the world,
and armies moved at his command. In some measure, perhaps, Nixon made
tapes of all his conversations because he wanted to be able to go back
to them when he was no longer President, and remember what was once--how
he had made great decisions from the large oval room, that led to great
changes in the world. That the greatness was not secure, not permanent,
was always a concern for him: "I'd build [a] wall so strong, none
would dream of attacking me. I would build this wall and my kingdom would
be secure," he says in Lees' play. Nixon refers to the Great Wall
of China, but in a sense he also means a wall around his pride, the great "kingdom" that
he has built, all have come crumbling down. All of these are ordinary
reactions to a personal crisis. In the political arena they may be regarded
as strange, suicidal, wrong; but as human beings, perhaps we can understand.
Lees' play reminds us as Nixon's speeches do not, that Nixon, like all
heroes, had a tragic flaw: he wanted to be remembered, but he couldn't
choose what he would be remembered for."--Jessica Chao '08
Created By: Tiffany Mok '06
and Courtney Chin '07
Date Created: July 7, 2005
Date Updated: August 9, 2005
Maintained By: Professor Lynne Viti, Writing Program
Expires: June 30, 2006