The iron curtain had not yet fallen when in 1985 the theater director Peter Sellars proposed to John Adams to stage the famous visit of President Richard Nixon to China in 1972, that of the historic handshake on the plane with the Chinese government leader Zhou Enlai. An image of détente that after two decades without diplomatic relations between both powers would change the course of the cold war.
That crazy idea of Sellars's premiered two years later at the Houston Opera with a libretto by Alice Goodman, who did a glorious job of documentation, and with Mark Morris as choreographer. And despite winning a Grammy, Adams' groundbreaking musical minimalism did not create a critical sensation, so it was not premiered at New York's Metropolitan Opera House until 2011.
Now, half a century after the event, Europe is experiencing a new awakening in terms of Nixon in China: while Gustavo Dudamel is conducting it these days at the Paris Opera, the Royal Theater is rehearsing it for what will be its premiere Spanish, this Monday, April 17.
Two musical directors –the Korean Olivia Lee-Gundermann and the Greek Kornilios Michailidis– alternate in the 7 performances that Madrid dedicates to this co-production with the Copenhagen Opera and the Scottish Opera directed on stage by the British reggista John Fulljames. The action is located inside a file with a large amount of relevant information. "Because it's about how we build history from those documents," Fulljames says.
“In the end, the whole opera is about death, about how we face it and what we leave behind. These politicians who in Act I seem the most powerful in the world feel impotent in Act III in the face of their mortality and very weak in the context of the legacy they leave behind.
In the words of the artistic director of the Teatro Real, "the production places more emphasis on the creation of history than on the destinies of individual people. In other words, the staging proposes that we see the figures as media constructions and not as people with real emotions".
The score is not easy at all and requires maximum concentration for three hours on the part of the performers, "with repetitive rhythms and changing colors that support the sense of suspense and scene changes," according to Lee-Gundermann. Adams drinks from jazz –there are even moments with a band– but also from the post-romanticism of R. Strauss or Stravinski, the romanticism of Wagner or even baroque rhythms.
“It is a historical opera that wants to reflect the past, the present and the future”, says Michailidis, for whom the innovation of the piece lies in the importance of the text above the action. “The nuances must be heard, which is why it is amplified, since there are no bassoons or horns but four saxophones, two pianos and a synthesizer”.
The cast includes baritones Leigh Melrose (Richard Nixon), Jacques Imbrailo (Chou En-Lai) and Borja Quiza (Henry Kissinger), sopranos Sarah Tynan (Pat Nixon) and Audrey Luna (Chiang Ch'ing, Madame Tse-Tung ). Mao Tse-Tung is played by the tenor, Alfred Kim, while the secretaries are the mezzo Sandra Ferrández, Gemma Coma-Alabert and Ekaterina Antipova.
