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‘Nixon in China’: An Interview with Peter Sellars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Matthew Daines
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Extract

Most critical commentary concerning John Adams's 1987 opera Nixon in China focussed on the opera's first act, a parodistic reenactment of the well-known ceremonial scenes associated with the China visit. It appears that Nixon in China is an opera in the traditional mould as Richard Nixon steps down the gangway of the Spirit of 76 to a hero's welcome. Yet beneath this veneer of realism lie rich subtexts. It emerges that what is really going on is a parody (in the satiric sense) of a grand opera, a parody in which issues of cultural representation and gender politics are worked out. These themes are brought to the fore in Acts II and III but have been ignored in most critical commentaries.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 197 , July 1996 , pp. 12 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 Porter, Andrew, ‘John Adams in Conversation’, Tempo 167 (12 1988): 25–30 Google Scholar; and Strickland, Edward ‘From Nixon in China to Walt Whitman: An Interview with John Adams’, Fanfare 13/3–4 (01–02 1990): 42–62 Google Scholar. A lengthier and less heavily edited version of the latter appears in Strickland's, American Composers: Dialogues on Contemporary Music (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1991), 177–94Google Scholar. See also Matthew Dames, ‘An Interview with John Adams’, Opera Quarterly (forthcoming).

2 For biographical information on Sellars, Peter see ‘Sellars, Peter’, Current Biography (1986): 513–16Google Scholar; Littlejohn, David, ‘Reflections on Peter Sellar's Mozart’, Opera Quarterly 7/2 (Summer 1990): 6–36 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allen, Jennifer, ‘The Many Directions of Peter Sellars’, Esquire (12, 1984), p. 146 Google Scholar: Eckert, Thor, ‘Taking Issue’, Opera News 50/1 (07 1985): 10–15 Google Scholar; Ledbetter, Steven ‘Sellars, Peter’, The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, ed. Hitchcock, H. Wiley and Sadie, Stanley (London, 1986), IV, 185–86Google Scholar; Macdonald, Heather, ‘On Peter Sellars’, Partisan Review 57/4 (Fall 1991): 707–12Google Scholar; Duffie, Bruce, ‘Conversation Piece: Director Peter Sellars’, The Opera Journal 25/2 (06 1992): 43–56 Google Scholar.